How Stevie Wonder’s uplifting song changed the United States

“Stevie Wonder can write almost any kind of song,” music critic and documentary filmmaker Nelson George tells the BBC. “As part of his mix of songs and melodies, he was always able to write songs about social injustice, especially happy string melodies that were easy to sing,” he adds. George compares Happy Birthday – a big, cheerful song – to another of Wonder’s songs, Ain’t It Lovely. “For a whole bunch of people who grew up in the last 40 years, Merry Christmas has become the standard Christmas song,” he says. “It’s amazing that someone can write something that becomes a fundamental part of life and has political significance, but he was able to do it.”

Action soundtrack

Wonder’s quest to create a holiday to mark Martin Luther King Day also follows in the tradition of popular American musicians and artists who joined social change movements throughout the 20th century, according to Kevin Gaines, the Julian Bond Professor of Civil Rights and Social Justice at the University of Virginia.

“It’s in keeping with Woody Guthrie of the 1930s and 1940s, whose songs reflected the social issues of the time,” Gaines told the BBC. He adds: “And the African-American opera singer, Marian Anderson, who sang in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., in protest against the Daughters of the American Revolution’s refusal to allow her to sing in their meeting hall.” “And also Billie Holiday, who recorded the anti-lynching anthem, Strange Fruit, and was harassed in the South when she sang it live.”

Gaines says Stevie Wonder’s career closely tracked the mid-century civil rights movement, starting with his first single, “Fingertips,” in 1963. Wonder was just 13 years old when “Fingertips” hit the charts in the summer of 1963 — released in the wake of King’s campaign to desegregate public spaces in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. Ostensibly a party song, Fingertips is not as overtly political as Wonder’s later songs. But the live recording is emblematic, the 13-year-old’s call and response for African-American teens to follow him in his celebration of black American rhythm, blues and soul rhythms. “The Birmingham protests made global headlines, with photos and video of police attacking children with dogs and high-pressure water cannons,” says Gaines. The fingertips were a harbinger of how young people would participate in the civil rights movement and youth protests of the 1960s. “It became the soundtrack to that movement,” says Gaines.