Life's Construction

Stevie Wonder : Race Babbling

[Purchase]

On October 30, 1979 Stevie Wonder followed up his incredible run of masterful 70's albums ( Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness' First Finale, Songs in the Key of Life) with the double album Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants. It's actually a soundtrack to a documentary that suggested plants have feelings too. Wonder has said the album "was an experimental project with me scoring and doing other things I like: challenging myself with all the things that entered my mind from the Venus's Flytrap to Earth's creation to coming back as a flower." 

The full page ad Stevie Wonder took out in Billboard Magazine

Though it debuted at US#4 on the album charts, it quickly plummeted. Critics were baffled by what they saw as a huge misstep. Today only the visionary nine minute "Race Babbling" survives the critical bashing with Pitchfork recently praising its "disorienting effect in more ways than one, a queering of the biggest African-American male pop star of the era that’s still without precedent."

Writing for Rolling Stone, Ken Tucker had praise for "Finale", but then says after that:you’re on your own, since plucking the exhilarating moments from Journey through the Secret Life of Plants is a harrowing, highly subjective task. One person’s nectar is another’s Karo syrup, and the stamens of Wonder’s Plants are bursting with both.

The quivering single "Send One Your Love" peaked at US #4.