White House Honors Stevie Wonder
On Febraury 25, President Obama honored musical legend Stevie Wonder with the Gershwin Prize for Lifetime Achievement, America’s highest award for pop music. Wonder is just the second performer to receive this distinction; in 2007, Paul McCartney was the first.
Stevie Wonder: Gershwin Award Winner and Raging Musical Genius
This is just the latest chapter in a career which has been literally full of distinctions. Other highlights of Stevie Wonder’s career include:
- Signed to MoTown Records at the age of 11
- Released 26 studio albums and numerous Greatest Hits, to date
- Won 25 Grammy awards
- Recorded 34 Billboard Top 10 singles
- Inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989
- Received Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996
- Received Kennedy Center Honors in in 1999
Stevie Wonder’s career has blended jazz, soul, blues, rock, funk, and pop music into songs that literally everyone knows. Songs like “My Cherie Amour,” “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” “You Are The Sunshine of My Life,” “I Just Called To Say I Love You,” and my personal favorite, “Superstition,” have truly become a part of the American consciousness of popular music (you forgot “Isn’t She Lovely” and “A Place in the Sun” — ed.).
Dig out your Stevie Wonder CDs today, or cassette tapes, or vinyl if you’re lucky, and revisit the work of one of our finest musicians and songwriters.
March 3rd, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Personally, “Higher Ground” is one of my favorites. Sure, it took the RHCP cover it for me to discover it, but still.