041 :: WONDER

Featuring

"As" by Stevie Wonder, from Songs in the Key of Life, released by Tamla Records in 1976. Listen

Transcript

Classic songs are classic for a reason. And this song wastes no time. It just immediately launches into this immaculate verse, a silvery melody set atop prismatic chords, all to express that most quintessential of messages: "I'll be loving you always". It's an encapsulation of what every pop song strives to be, and we're not even a minute in. And before we get there, the song will already start veering off in its own direction, transforming all of a sudden into this gospel-inspired chorus, with these new and almost haunting harmonies, which turn the song into something mystifying, riveting, and rapturous.

But the song won't hold us there, at least not yet. And so we return to the sweetness of the verse. But even here, we can start to notice a gnomic quality to the lyrics, with lines like "As time knew to move on since the beginning" or "As now can't reveal the mystery of tomorrow". What is this? Is it a love song, or a treatise on metaphysics? Or is it the genius of this song, to recognize that love cannot be expressed in any other way or in any other terms, because love is a greater power that lies beyond the grasp of words?

Though we can start to feel a tremor of that power in this refrain, with its dark chromatic tension and full-throated call and response. And this is also where the lyrics reach their most evocative pitch, with a series of impossible similes like "until the day that eight times eight times eight is four", or "until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky". Obviously, what the singer means is that their love is everlasting. But the song sure makes you feel like something deeper's being said.

And this is where a lesser songwriter would've left things, and where commercial radio would start crossfading it out, as indeed they do, per the radio edit of this song. And this would be sufficient; these first three minutes are already a monumental achievement of pop songwriting. But on the full album version of this song, there's still four minutes left, and the songwriter is just getting started, and is about to blow the whole thing wide open.

Suddenly the singer assumes a whole new voice and tone, replacing their loving proclamations with preacherly exhortations. They're now speaking directly to us, and they're about to mince no words, in my favourite lines of the song:

Make sure when you say you're in it but not of it
You're not helping to make this earth a place sometimes called Hell
Change your words into truth and then change that truth into love

This bridge is truly a bridge to the back half of this song, which feels like it occupies a whole new plane of existence. Because it's now clear that this song isn't just about some ordinary love, everlasting as it may be. It's also about a higher, more transcendent love, which is not the typical stuff of pop songs. Perhaps it's about the singer's love for God, or about God's love for humanity, but in my mind it's most centrally about the universal love we're all meant to have for one another, and that love's absolute transformative power.

There's no way to truly describe this love in words. The only way to get at it is analogically, through a series of impossible similes, or by extension from a never-ending romantic love, or by means of a seven-minute sonic opus that stands as a musical exemplification of that love's endurance and supremacy. It's enough to send shivers down your spine.

But what amazes me most about this song is that, up until this year, I had never truly heard it. I may have caught flashes of it in the background, heard it playing here and there, but I had never sat down and let it speak to me. I should've known better; classic songs are classic for a reason, after all. But maybe there's a lesson in that, for the power of love is also easily missed, even though it is always there, at the ready, just waiting for us to take it up, as it always will be, until the day that you are me and I am you.

Liner Notes

I owe my (re-)discovery of "As" to The Wonder of Stevie, Wesley Morris's magisterial tour of Stevie's "classic period" in the 1970s. The whole thing is worth a listen, and the episode on Songs in the Key of Life has plenty more on "As", including some commentary from Michelle Obama.

In 2015, Janelle Monáe, Jill Scott, and India Arie performed "As" at the GRAMMY TV special "Stevie Wonder: Songs In The Key Of Life — An All-Star GRAMMY Salute".

In 2018, Stevie performed "As" at Aretha Franklin's funeral.