what really happened with Stevie Wonder in the 80's ?

i would assume most in this forum knows about (at least, they should) Stevie's amazing 5 album run in the 70's. it could be argued that Stevie was THE artist of the decade even over mighty Bowie, Young, Elton, Zep, Floyd, etc. solely based on those 5 albums alone.

but then when the 80's hit, Stevie's overall quality went into sharp decline. every great artists has their peaks & valleys and most of the big names mentioned above went through similar slumps in the same decade (so did Prince & Bruce in the 90's). however unlike those guys, Stevie never recovered & made any meaningful (artistic) comeback since. sure, he had some hits in the 80's but it almost felt like he went back to being a 'singles' artist rather than the ultimate 'albums' artist that he was during the golden run.

it's not like he was that old (29 when 80's started) so...what the hell happened ?? some say 'Hotter Than July' is badly underrated...ok....i would agree about half of the album being top shelf material but the rest ?? total fillers which were non-existent during his peak years and the ratio gets even worse from then on.

anyways if any of you have good explanation of why such steep decline with no recovery... then please fill me in.

 

It could have been:

1) A loss of nerve after his Secret Life Of Plants soundtrack met a cool reception. From the 80s, Stevie no longer blazed trails like in the 70s, and stayed firmly in the middle of the road.

2) Over reliance on Midi synths and drum programming. The warm Moog/Yamaha tones of his classic period were substituted for thin, sterile presets, and his wonderfully fluid drumming with stiff, quantized beats.

3) His growing family and extra curricular activities (charity work, political campaigning) diverted his time and energy away from music.

4) All around floundering in the face of changing musical fashions.

5) Lack of real collaborators. SITKOL and Hotter Than July are brilliant albums. But the quality isn't as consistently high as on Music Of My Mind through to Fullfillingness First Finale. For those albums he has Margouleff and Cecil as Associate Producers. If Stevie ever releases new albums, I hope he has an outside producer - someone who won't be afraid to sometimes tell him 'no'!

 

damn, that about sums it up and it only took 1 reply. gotta love this forum...thank you !

 

my understanding is that it was mostly this in combination with boredom of the music business. I wouldn't say there was a significant decline in his musicianship or songwriting, by the way, just in the quantity of it.

 

The failure of "Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants" discouraged Stevie from experimenting and taking on more ambitious projects.

 

Agreed, I love Stevie's drumming, the programming took away the feel & made way for plasticity

 

I think the original premise is overstated. Stevie's decline from a peak in his 20s was no more precipitous than that of Bowie, Prince, Lennon and McCartney and countless others you could name (Jimmy Page, David Byrne, Curtis Mayfield ... I could go all day). And I think Hotter Than July is a solid album; I actually like it better than Key of Life, where almost every song is jammed out to double its proper length.

 

Maybe the question should be: is humanly possible for an artist to release timeless and flawless albums one after another for two/three decades?

The answer is no, but he came closer than most

 

indeed, no one was at that level: before, during or after.

he is the benchmark that everything should be compared to.
sadly, he has to be compared to that period too.

 

I don't think this can be overstated. To me this is the biggest difference in everything Stevie did after Hotter than July.

 

perhaps i overstated a bit...i pulled out my old 'Jungle Fever' CD last night since God knows when and...i couldn't even get through it... and that was the reason for my rant.
but my counter point being...all the giants (that are in Stevie's league) had their 'comebacks' even just for an album or two that reaffirms their artistic greatness in the minds of the public.
i don't think Stevie ever had that....instead people just think of him as this 'blind wonder' that sang 'Ebony & Ivory' & 'I Just Called To Say I Love You'. at least Bowie & Prince kept releasing albums even through rough patches but it almost feels like Stevie stopped trying and just accepted what he became a la Phil Collins/Rod Stewart.

i did a quick forum search last night and even though there're bunch of Stevie threads abound, none of'em lasts long and its usually only with same few people.
let's compare that to...i don't know....whenever some Kiss thread pops up...this is not a knock on Kiss (i actually own more Kiss albums than Stevie) but Come On....
perhaps i'm stating the obvious here but then again Stevie really didn't help the matter much for the past 35 years.

 

As a huge fan of Stevie's run in the 70's, I feel your pain. My guess is he was just chasing the modern sound like so many other artists at the time. The 80's style production and sounds derailed many a great artist.

Out of my favorite artists to me it hurt Steve Winwood's sound the most. I like a lot of Winwood's 80's work, but I wish he would go back in and remix/rerecord those tracks.

 

I do love Hotter Than July. Great SACD, @JohnnyQuest. It was a lot tighter than SITKOL and produced at least 3 hits here.

I like The Woman In Red, even though it's a million miles away from his 70s form.

Also bought In Square Circle. Again, very popular here. Could do with a remaster, this one.

Didn't take to Skeletons.

 

Well that is pretty much the definitive answer. There is nothing that I can add, other than that I completely agree (which is not to say that he didn't release good 80's songs here and there, just not as many, and often with production that doesn't hold up as well as his 70's work).

 

I think the pre-sets and the drum machines were at the root of the problem. Even the 1980s material I love, like "That Girl" and "I Just Called To Say I Love You," showcases the fact Stevie was by now more or less a one-man band, with all that entailed. Compare it to "Superstition"-era Stevie where there was clearly a live band in the room and Stevie was working out ideas and finding common ground with other musicians. I think the communication was tiring for him, and the technology allowed him to have a fuss-free alternative which took a lot of the stress and thus much of the resulting quality out of his work.

 

I would say the 80s (especially 1984-1989) was really Bowie's artistic slump. The 90s was his comeback mode and large apology for his 1980s stuff. The 1980s gave him his biggest commercial success, but it also nearly deceimated


With Stevie, I think he reached a point where he'd achieved all he ever wanted to where he started on autopilot more and more. It's gotten worse as he's gotten older as his output has dramatically sllllooooowwwwwwwwwedddd dowwwwnnnnn. 2005-1995-1991-1987. Just four albums in the last thirty years. A Time 2 Love seemed to get some of his best marks since Hotter Than July but he certainly has taken his time in following it up. He keeps saying he has new music around the corner, but it's been 11 years. I think he generally is content with his status and legacy and will only make something new when he really feels his muse.

With Stevie, similarly with Michael Jackson, he was a star and doing it at such a young age that even when he was still rather young, he was closer to artists 8-10 years older than him at his stage than his age peers. So when he was 35-ish, he seemed to have more in common with the guys in their 40s than he did other 35 year old musicians.

 

Good summary, very insightful. I've been listening to Talking Book and Innervisions a lot lately and I'm always amazed at how great that era was for Stevie. He's a master. No one could touch him in those days.

 

1. Ebony and Ivory
2. I Just Called to Say I Love You
3. Part Time Lover

That said, all three new songs he did for "Musiquarium" were brilliant, and there are some nice moments on The Woman in Red soundtrack and In Square Circle.

 

i never even bother to check out Time To Love when it was released, how is it really in your opinion ? i'll take your word for it, Bowieboy.

btw, i said Prince & BRUCE in the 90's...not Bowie.

 

He continued putting out good albums, albeit at a slower pace than in the prior decade. No one could expect him to continue delivering album after album of transcendence and grandeur on the scale of Innervisions and Songs In the Key of Life. After the experimentalism of Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants, he opted for the humbler approach of good songwriting with suitable appropriations of the latest technology. Wonder's pace during the '80s was respectable for a musician then into his third decade as a performer and recording artist.

TriMax Soul Albums from the United States [Page 8] - Rate Your Music »

 

i went to sleep last night after reading this (no wonder i feel tired this morning~) thinking that was SOME answer...
even more amazing is...how did he thought/wrote it up in only 6 MINUTES after i post the thread up at 2 o'clock in the morning ?!~
either Orthogonian is a super quick thinker/writer or he must've been wondering the same thing for YEARS.

 

Is it? The original release sounds incredibly dull and flat. Does the SACD bring it to life and add color to the sound?

 

ooops, I thought it was Bowie lol.

With 90s Bruce... Tom Joad IMO did make up for the Human Touch/Lucky Town misstep, but yea, it was the 2000s when he truly came back.

Its been a minute since I've listened to A Time To Love, but I do recall enjoying it. Stevie was moving into this century with some of the best songs he's done since the early 1980s. I also liked the production on it a lot more than much of his latter material, it was a nice blend of 2000s r&b and Stevie's classic 1970s sound together. It certainly felt more organic than a lot of the uber-electronic stuff he was pumping out like Characters. There is a definite "band" sound on the album which was refreshing. I'd never rank it amongst his 70s work but I did think it felt like Stevie had taken some of the latter criticisms to heart and tried to put out the best album he had in him at that stage. Just a shame that 11 years on and still no followup when this should've been the album to establish that Stevie still has some creative mojo.

 

Oh God, yes! It's fantastic. I heard things I'd never heard before. You have to really blast it, though. If you play at a low volume it sounds weak and quiet.

Think there's a thread on this and Stevie's other SACDs here. The only other one I have is Fulfillngness' First Finale. That's great too.

 

This is the same issue I have with Peter Gabriel, although looks like he is finally planning to release an album of new songs(not revisions of his past songs). I guess Ovo' was his last album, although his last proper album was 'Up' that I think was in 2002, so looking at a 15 year break? I know that he has been busy with other projects, but he is one of my favorite artists, and to only have 2 proper albums in the past 24 years has left an empty hole in my music addiction. At least 'Us' & 'Up' were mostly great albums outside of a few songs, so makes me wonder if he just ran out of ideas, or just was not interested in making new albums(outside of soundtracks, music for opening of a building and creating stripped down versions of his past catalog). At his age now, I wonder if his next album will be his last, as at his current release schedule, hard to expect another album by around 2028-2030. Real World Studios might be a Retirement Home by then where Sting shows up singing out for his Visiting Nurse, "Roxanne-put on the Night Light".