Stevie Wonder's Worst Song: A Poll -- "I Just Called To Say I Love You" vs. "Ebony and Ivory"

yeah that is paul's fault xp

"I Just Called..." has all kinds of tricky melodic changes and unusual lyrical emphases.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, May 15, 2020 8:49 AM (nineteen seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

when i was a kid i used to think it was much older than it was bc these qualities make it sit really nicely against '60s motown

(i wasn't registering the instrumentation, just the melodic choices)

It's a hard song to sing!

have you heard this? A much looser, funner Paul-Stevie collaboration, and they did co-write it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43JwlTs6NaQ

Voted for I Just Called To Say I Love You, chiefly on the strength of that horrible little parp-parp-parp Casio keyboard bit at the very end. They're both appalling tracks though.

There are things to like about I Just Called, but the horrible keyboard sound cancels all of them out.

I just called to say I love you is actually v good and the sound is also great.

I Just Called To Say I Love You was #1 on the very first Top of the Pops I remember seeing as a child so I'm weirdly attached to it. Ebony and Ivory is just straight up terrible.

I just called to say I love you is the best selling Motown single in the uk ever

I love the horrible keyboard sounds in IJCTSILU! Needs to be about half as long though. Still better than E&I.

I don't knock'em for "Ebony" because he didn't write it.

But he did agree to sing it.

which of these too commonly-accepted duds

LOL Freudian slip because heart u Stevie 4ever!

Heard "I Just Called To Say I Love You" recently in the supermarket. I know what people are saying about the tricky melodic changes etc but it's still not remotely a good song. "Ebony and Ivory" is stupid McCartney pap. Voted "Just Called",

I think what I hate most about IJCTSILY is the corny ba-dum-dum dum bassline.

kind of a 60s Motown staple baseline, sitting on the dock of the bay type thing

That is not a 60s Motown bassline.

That is a wedding band bassline.

Jammin on the 1

It's a total Casio keyboard preset bass line.

Jammin' on the 1!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIm6xmOyO6Q

No piece of pop culture taught me more about the synclavier's possibilities.

Kinda surprised E&I didn't inspire some racist musicians to retaliate by refusing to use the black keys on their piano

I am looking at this thread almost as angrily as I look at the political threads

It's a total Casio keyboard preset bass line.

LOL yes, any professional bassist playing that bassline in 1984 deserved to be summarily dismissed.

I really like E&I’s demo. It’s v pretty imo.

https://youtu.be/uqALSO0l7fI

It's a total Casio keyboard preset bass line.

LOL yes, any professional bassist playing that bassline in 1984 deserved to be summarily dismissed.

― Frank Bough: I Took Drugs with Vice Girls (Tom D.), Friday, May 15, 2020 10:19 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's played on a keyboard by Stevie Wonder. it's not a preset or a bass player

and do you think presets plucked that style of bassline from thin air?

the fuck is happening here

we actually arguing about a preset vs live?

the vocoder backing vocals at the end when the chorus goes up are good

There is no defence for writing, singing on, or in any way tolerating the existence of "Ebony and Ivory."

The verses of "I Just Called..." are tres pretty and I was annoyed when High Fidelity (the movie) shamed me out of liking the song for years. Hell, even John Prine covered it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkEevr0pz5Y

I just put on i just called on my phone with my shitty headphones an the first verse gave me the old tingly spine asmr thing.

... the black keys on their piano

I can't play piano myself, but a friend was telling me some time back about how often Stevie Wonder writes with an emphasis on the black keys. Like in "Tell Me Something Good," or "I Wish" or "Superstition" or "Higher Ground." Maybe because he is blind, those raised keys helped him come up with those awesome percussive parts?

Anyway, I wasn't suggesting Stevie Wonder is not a genius or didn't or couldn't play the "I Just Called ... " bassline, just that I used to have a Casio that automatically filled in the chords (a la my Omnichord) and the one I had had this particular "fill" button that triggered a brief breakdown that ended with the same "cha cha cha" ending as "I Just Called..." Which could be why musically I think the song as arranged is kind of a stinker, despite Stevie's absolutely lovely vocal.

Okay pianists often bang on the black keys (Dylan, Ferry). Wonder's better than that, though?

Dylan and Ferry are pretty primitive piano players, I thought, but I don't know! I found this quote:

ST: Do you have favorite keys to work in?

Dylan: On the piano, my favorite keys are the black keys. And they sound better on guitar, too. Sometimes when a song's in a flat key, say B flat, bring it to the guitar, you might want to put it in A. But... that's an interesting thing you just said. It changes the reflection. Mainly in mine the songs sound different. They sound... when you take a black key song and put it on the guitar, which means you're playing in A flat, not too many people like to play in those keys. To me it doesn't matter.(Laughs) It doesn't matter because my fingering is the same anyway. So there are songs that, even without the piano, which is the dominant sound if you're playing in the black keys -- why else would you play in that key except to have that dominant piano sound? -- the songs that go into those keys right from the piano, they sound different. They sound deeper. Yeah. They sound deeper. Everything sounds deeper in those black keys. They're not guitar keys, though. Guitar bands don't usually like to play in those keys, which kind of gives me an idea, actually, of a couple of songs that could actually sound better in black keys.

There are lots of sort of march time piano pounders that came up in the '60s (from Brian Wilson to McCartney); my friend and I theorized made it easier to play and sing at the same time. But again, I'm not a piano player.

Stevie Wonder is across the board more sophisticated than most, afaict, with maybe the exception of Wilson, but Brian Wilson's genius is so weird and unconventional it's almost accidental. Any piano players out there able to weigh in?

(Black keys might also have something to do with gospel/church playing, too. I saw something that generalized how in churches "EVERYTHING is played in Db, Ab, Ebm, Gb hexatonic, etc.no matter what the original key was.")

Irving Berlin could only play on the black keys and had to have a special pinao built to allow him to play in different keys. I think he did OK for himself.

!

https://music.si.edu/object-day/irving-berlins-transposing-upright-piano

Curtis mayfield tuned the strings on his guitar to the black keys on the piano

IME flat keys sit easier in the voice, particularly E-flat and A-flat

Pentatonic is it? Sounds Japanese or Scottish.

In my head I'm hearing identical outros of "Feliz Navidad" and "I Just Called"

The outro of "I Just Called" is bad but the rest is fine.

lol that cosby show guest spot is the 1st thing I think of for this era of Stevie

Listening to it again, my main beef with IJCTSILY is just that it goes on and on and on and doesn't let up.
It also sounds very cheap, but as someone who regularly listens to Novelty Rock by Denim, I am in no position to count this against it.

A friend explained that Ferry's uniqueness as a songwriter came from a missing chord that came from a finger not coming down on one of the piano keys.

That John Prine version is so, so good.

That is not a 60s Motown bassline.

That is a wedding band bassline.

isn’t Motown the ur-wedding band music though?

IME flat keys sit easier in the voice, particularly E-flat and A-flat

so does Madonna

*like

Isn't the entire first Van Halen album more or less in E flat? Maybe almost every song on the first two Suede albums, too, iirc. And "Boys of Summer," I think.

well yeah cos they tuned down a half step

every Metallica album since and including Load too

and every Slayer album other than Show No Mercy

Yeah, lots of stuff tuned down a half step, iirc.

Hendrix, Weezer ... you know, all the greats.

I always assume anytime I hear guitar in songs in E-flat that the guitar isn't using standard tuning, has a capo, or the whole thing is lowered or raised a half pitch after being recorded. I'm not much of a guitarist though so not sure if this is always the case.

I find (in my limited experience) that when something is altered after recording the guitar tends to be in some impossible in-between tuning, like every song on "Highway to Hell," for example. But Hendrix, SRV, Suede, Weezer, Nirvana, GNR, a bunch of metal stuff, it's tuned down half a step on purpose, I think.

Makes it heavier. Sabbath downtuned. As did the Velvet Underground, strangely enough.

Lots of guitarists tune down, for all sorts of reasons.

obv gets done at the desk/control room too, eg “when the levee breaks”

Can you expand on this, because I find it really interesting! The interval relationships remain the same, so what particularly makes you prefer those keys? The absolute frequencies of the notes?

I am not a vocal pedagogue so take this with a grain of salt and confirm with someone who actually teaches the mechanics of vocal production but it seems to have something to do with where certain notes land on my vocal chords. As you say, the intervals are the same, but the most "natural" key for me to sing in seems to be E-flat; that requires the least amount of work/feels the most comfortable. You could almost say that I feel like my voice is "tuned" to that key; I don't know if it's due to the physical structure of my esophagus/vocal cords or even if it's specifically transferable to other people (although I notice a lot of bass/baritone rep is in E-flat, which may also be attributable to usable vocal range). When you start working in related keys via the circle of fifths, the closest ones to E-flat are B-flat (up a fifth) and A-flat (down a fourth); there's a lot of note overlap between those keys and it feels easier to produce/stay in key when I'm in those keys.

I am looking at this thread almost as angrily as I look at the political threads

― DJP

So I should just quash that impulse to post the Eddie Murphy / Joe Piscopo SNL sketch about Ebony and Ivory? Because ever since i saw that skit when I was like 12, I've never been able to hear the song the same again (but I would guess it hasn't aged well).

From a UK POV it just makes me thing about the Alexei Sayle rant about a "song about racial harmony ON PIANOS"

It's the only metaphor that can be played. That and the world's tiniest violin, I guess.

So I should just quash that impulse to post the Eddie Murphy / Joe Piscopo SNL sketch about Ebony and Ivory?

oh no, that shit was hilarious; post and be merry

(from memory)

"You're blind as a bat and I have sight ... "

Jazz guitarists around the world play in flat keys without retuning ftr.

Also "I Just Called" is the reason I never looked into Stevie Wonder's catalogue for far too long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h2jZtuRuic&t=182s

Let's try that again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h2jZtuRuic

Jazz guitarists around the world play in flat keys without retuning ftr.

Jazz guitarists know how to play their instruments. #snap #nohedidnt

Just having IJCTSILY stuck in my head coats my brain with karaoke-cooked star wipes after each line.

Which reminds me, I could have sworn the original video to this featured wild shit like a giant chocolate candy bar floating through the blue sky like a Millennium Falcon, but after going through so many videos this weekend (which is why the song is still stuck in my head,) I couldn't find anything like that.

So maybe it was just me.

That is absolutely a thing in one version of the video. At the time DJ/TV presenter Noel Edmonds refered to it as "a flying piece of toast".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEYo6_ysxX4

Oh, similarly, was there a version of Whitney Houston's "How Will I Know" video where splashes of neon paint were superimposed over the video? Coulda sworn that was also a thing.

The advent of the MTV era must have been tough to navigate any of the 70's old guard, but especially so if you were blind.
a lot of trust involved there.

What's Billy Squier's or Rod Stewart's excuse?

That's it, snoball! Don't know why I couldn't find that.

It's more of a Dune effect than Star Wars though.

"it seems to have something to do with where certain notes land on my vocal chords"
I haven't heard this before, but it's interesting that human vocal chords might actually just have a natural resting placement that aligns with the half step downtune.

I figured tuning half-step lower is win-win for when you're looking to make the guitars and bass subtly fuller, darker, meatier, without having to change a whole lot. And as a extra bonus everything is easier to sing a half-step lower because you don't have to reach as high up. I'm pretty sure Poison and Motley Crue have also done this a bunch. But the natural vocal chord alignment makes a lot of sense -- probably something easier to figure out with some coaching.

I played in a band that insisted on tuning down a half-step. They were good songs, and it definitely made it easier to sing, but I dunno. To my ears, it really did sound like we were half a step behind everything else.

Hm, I don't think classical vocal repertoire is predominantly in flat keys, is it? I would expect that to be the case if those keys were inherently easier to sing in? They tend to be good for horn players aiui so a lot of jazz repertoire is in flat keys.

Both songs are terrible.
Ultimately I went with "Ebony and Ivory."
"I Just Called to say I Love You" is Steve's cross to bear.
Whereas "Ebony and Ivory" was terrible and also had a Beatle.
That makes it twice as terrible.
It's simple math.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Hm, I don't think classical vocal repertoire is predominantly in flat keys, is it? I would expect that to be the case if those keys were inherently easier to sing in? They tend to be good for horn players aiui so a lot of jazz repertoire is in flat keys.

Composers don’t necessarily compose for ease of singing and a lot of is probably tied more to vocal range than inherent tuning; for example, I have the low edition of Burleigh’s spiritual book and, out of 48 songs, 32 are in flat keys with the most prevalent being F, E-flat, A-flat, and D-flat (Gm has good representation as well).

I described this in terms of how it feels to me rather than in terms of “this is how the voice works” intentionally

The lyric is obviously a mawkish attempt to tackle a very serious and complex issue, but - and it's probably just nostalgia playing a game with me here - I absolutely love the melody and arrangement of E&I. I cannot defend it. It's almost certainly objectively bad. But I guess that's the way love is.

IJCTSILY has swell verses, but my main feeling about it whenever I think about it is remembering how my mum would get very excited by the vocoder vocal section, and the relish with which she'd explain to me that this singing was done with a synthesiser!

aw come on, I Just Called might be a bit drippy but it's tonnes better than Ebony and Ivory which is just mawkish moosh.

Can't fathom why they didn't release What's That You're Doing instead. So funky and fun and way more Stevie and way more Paul. I absolutely love it

that wasn't aimed at any particular poster, just agog about the results

Ebony and Ivory is crappy but it has a certain musical charm for me. I have a visceral hatred for IJCTSILY. It is such a joyless slog, in the way that 'We are the World' is a slog. The lyrics are a sentimental abomination, not as bad as say, 'Always and Forever,' but close. I hope I die before I hear it again.

No way WATW can be slog when so many black performers sing so well on it.

“always and forever”... bad?????

fp'ed and went back in time and SB'ed as well for that

Re: We Are The World - lots of performers sing well on terrible songs, which means nothing to me. There are plenty of great songs to choose from the the same performers. Re: 'Always and Forever" = my most hated song of all time (w/ possible exception of 'Hey Brother' by Avicii).

did u run over cats growing up

LOLZ no I love kitties. BTW I cannot comprehend how Heatwave, who created the glorious and eternal 'Groove Line' and awesome 'Boogie Nights,' 'Mind-Blowing Decisions,' and 'Too Hot To Handle' - just to name a few - could have also shitted out Always and Forever.