The title for this project is “How Music Changed”, and it has been my business to decide which artists and/or albums have been the most influential on the development of musical styles.

In 1974, who was more influential than Stevie Wonder? Based on his run of work from 1972’s “Talking Book” to 1976’s “Songs in the Key of Life”, he very well deserves to be lauded as the most important artist of the 1970’s, and “Fulfillingness’ First Finale” sits at the midpoint of Wonder’s most creative era.

Every song here was influential, and most of them still are. Here, Wonder follows his personal muse without much concern for populism. and the composite result is breathtaking in its personal honesty, while simultaneously serving as a roadmap of sorts for the direction that music was going. Wonder was a primary force in the “Me Decade”, and he did it by being simultaneously introspective and outwardly opinionated. The rest of the world could only listen and attempt to follow suit.

Featured tracks:

Smile Please

Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away

Too Shy to Say

Boogie On Reggae Woman

Creepin'

You Haven't Done Nothin'

It Ain't No Use

They Won't Go When I Go

Bird of Beauty

Please Don't Go

July 1974 - Billboard Charted #1