Welcome to our presentation of Innervisions,Stevie Wonder’s sixteenth album. Yes, that is not a typo. It was released on Motown Records August 3, 1973. Three days after the release, Stevie Wonder was in a near-fatal car accident. He was in a coma for four days and many thought he might die. It took a good year to recover, during which he temporarily lost his sense of smell and feared he might lose his musical abilities as well. Though, of course, the songs on the album were written and recorded well before the crash, Innervisions will always be linked to Wonder’s brush with death, and the recordings, perhaps, have more weight and power because of it. The album features several classic hits, including “Higher Ground,” “Living for the City,” and “He’s Misstra Know-it-All.” Wonder wrote, arranged and produced every song on the album, and he played many of the instruments on all the songs as well. In fact, he is the only artist who appears on “Higher Ground” and “Living for the City.” So in many ways this album is Wonder’s inner vision, one that he was able to express and articulate with astonishing clarity and force. Many consider it Wonder’s finest album and one of the greatest rock albums of all time. Sit back and see if you agree.

Lineup

• Donnie Johnson
• The Shadowboxers
• Micah Dalton