Stevie Wonder: Fulfillingness' First Finale [MOTOWN]

Why you'll love it

This 180g gatefold edition was newly mastered by Kevin Reeves and comes with a download code. The album topped the Billboard chart and won three Grammys, including Album of the Year.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Gatefold jacket
• Download card included
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

After the wide-screen social commentary of Innervisions, Stevie Wonder turned the lens inward. Fulfillingness' First Finale is the fourth of the five records from his classic period, and the most personal of them: reflective, warm, a little sombre in places, and every note of it written, arranged and produced by Wonder himself.

"Smile Please" eases in on a soft Latin lilt, "Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away" builds into a gospel testimony, and "Boogie On Reggae Woman" bounces along on one of the great synth basslines. "Creepin'" and "They Won't Go When I Go" are spare and haunting, while "You Haven't Done Nothin'" sharpens the clavinet, brings in a drum machine and calls up The Jackson 5 for backing vocals; it went to No. 1 on the Hot 100.

It also topped the Soul LPs chart for eight weeks across the autumn of 1974. When Paul Simon took Album of the Year the following February, he thanked Stevie Wonder for not making an album that year, which is about as gracious as any acceptance speech in Grammy history gets.

Also at Kops: more Stevie Wonder on vinyl · browse Classic Soul

Tracklist

Listen

On Tamla / Motown, a reissue of the 1974 album.