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Conversation Peace

Conversation Peace is made up of love songs in the key of life and life songs in the key of love, just like all the other records Stevie Wonder has made for the past 20 years. What changes, as he gets older, is just how much love he’s willing to bring to a life that doesn’t seem to be getting any better. 1995 means drive-by shootings, gang wars and homelessness in the urban milieu that has always been Wonder’s lyrical home. But where he once got downright angry in “Big Brother,” or reporterly and objective in “Living For The City,” Wonder is now reaching out to his fellow man and spreading his love around. He gets murdered in both verses of the funky “My Love Is With You,” and responds with bouncy pop choruses, a message to “spread the love I’ve given,” and, only at the song’s tail end, a plea to “ban the hand gun.” This is the idea of love conquering all taken to an extreme.

Which is not to say that Wonder has floated away from reality and landed on a cloud. He finds both good love and bad. But while a contemporary like Neil Young might top a song about poverty, crack and homelessness with a sarcastic call to “keep on rockin’ in the free world,” Wonder is deeply sincere and optimistic. His chorus to such a song calls for taking “the time out to love someone.” There is still toughness in his heart and even in his voice–on “Tomorrow Robins Will Sing,” he follows Edley Shine’s toasting reggae intro with an uncharacteristically gruff vocal that sounds like Stevie does Springsteen, and uses it to deliver a sermon that would make any preacher envious. Other songs on Conversation Peace address the healing power of love more directly, and Wonder bathes them in a joyful variety of the one-man-band keyboard funk that has always been his stock in trade.

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Conversation Peace, Funk, motown, Pop, rnb, Soul, Stevie Wonder