In a way, part of the problem is you need to be more clear and more simple than we are ever inclined to be. The river has moved past that time. We tend to go in the other direction. In the very early years, we had all of these theatrical things. I look back fondly on all of that stuff. It has to be worth it. We memorably had these ventriloquist dummy heads on the tops of sticks, and that was part of the show for a while. The spotlight would just be on them, and they would sing one of the songs.
And we have actually revived the stick a number of times. Traditionally, it has a microphone duct-taped onto it. So it has this kind of super—Phil Collins smashing sound that just abruptly cuts off. I have to ask him. I have no idea. When he was really little, he told me in no uncertain terms that Michael Jackson was superior to the Beatles, because the Beatles wrote songs and sang them, which they were good at, but Michael Jackson could dance. It put me in my place.
John and I did a show a few years ago in Brooklyn where we revived the old tape recorder. We had a set for which we brought out the old reel-to-reel, and it was just me and him onstage, and it was super fun. So we played a bunch of songs from The Else. Maybe it does. But it was just pretty cool to try it out in that format, to take more recent songs and play them in the way that we would have played them back in the s.
That was very informative. I think anyone that follows the team would agree with you. To answer your question, I feel like I'm the kind of fan who's just as fascinated with what happens off the court.
The early Ben Simmons stuff , for example, really had me in a trance. It kind of feels like the basketball is a vessel into these other things, like what you were saying earlier. Sports in general I think for me has become so much more about narrative. And some of this is because the teams I root for are generally bad, and so I have to find pleasure elsewhere. But sports has in a way become for me so much about drama and narrative equally -- just as much I love the mechanics of the game, I love the nuance of the game, I love the "up close and against the glass" of a sporting event.
But I also think, gosh there's such a great opportunity for rich narrative and because it's the theater of sport is, to me, like the theater of any kind of collaborative opportunity where people are working towards a similar goal. It's the same kind of drama that can come about when we're talking about album making. But then I also think about Ross Gay's recent book, "Be Holding," where he just went really in on one moment and also the mechanics of the moment, which is also poetry, but I never would have thought of it in that way.
I think what Ross's book did so well, is that it gets down to the granular notion of that. People often talk about Steph Curry's shooting as poetry in motion. But what's more poetic to me is how Steph Curry moves without the ball. Like Steph Curry's off ball motion, to find himself some open space with which he can operate and shoot in, that to me is more poetic.
Because he understands he is someone who is kind of gliding along a restricted area, understanding really small angles and really small openings, and how to fit his body through them so that, in spite of being pursued by a great many people at all times, he can still find himself a little bit of air.
And that to me, knowing the challenges of escape despite relentless pursuit That's poetic. To switch gears, I wanted to ask you about the MacArthur grant. When the award was announced, you said you have a "personal disinterest" in the idea of the genius. What did you mean by that? I think to uphold the idea of genius is to kind of create scarcity, to present the idea of genius as rare to me is not really useful because I see moments of brilliance every day in people who I believe are granting me a type of genius, or offering a type of genius to the world that I get to be a part of.
So that to me means that brilliance is abundant and not singular. And I don't want to be on the outside of that abundance, which is why something like 68to05 exists. This song is about some really personal stuff between me and a family member. I wrote it down when I was pissed off. We tried this once or twice, and this was one that I actually ended up using.
When I was writing it, I tuned my guitar to this weird tuning and I just started playing. I was picturing a cold little cabin. I was just trying to create a little portrait with my words. The other cool thing about this song is the arrangement that we did. When I wrote this one, it was about 5 a. Then, I sent the demo that I made up to Aaron and we worked on it together until we got it.
I feel like this song really speaks for itself. Again, I was awake and my whole band was asleep, so I went outside and I played. The middle of the night, when everybody else is asleep, is a great time to write. I wrote this song with my friend Ronnie McCoury and his son, Evan. So we wrote about that. I told Ronnie a story about one time when I slipped into this little dream while I was driving.
The other thing I should mention about this song is the big section in the middle where I wanted to flash to the inside of a vehicle. The record featured two socially conscious No. All three singles fared well on the pop charts as well. Fulfillingness' First Finale , released after Wonder had survived a serious car accident that left him in a coma, displayed his trademark odes to romance and beauty while also looking squarely at spirituality and death.
The sexy "Boogie on Reggae Woman" went to No. Even with this array of accomplishments, it was the double album with EP set Songs in the Key of Life that many have hailed as Wonder's most legendary project and one of the greatest records of all time. Offering a rich span of songs with genre fusions aplenty, Songs covered everything from ethnic diversity in the U. Over the years, other artists struck gold with Wonder remakes, as seen with Aretha Franklin 's No. By those incredible lofty standards, the s weren't nearly as successful for Wonder.
Still, he continued to be a huge musical force. That same year, Wonder also released his greatest hits compilation Original Musiquarium I , which featured the No.
The single also won Wonder an Academy Award for best original song. Wonder released his next album, Square Circle , in , which featured the historic track "Part-Time Lover," the first song to ever reach No. The album Characters was released two years later, featuring two No. In addition to his acclaimed artistry, Wonder has routinely tackled social issues through his music and appearances.
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