Every Time I See You I Go Wild
Stevie Wonder
I Was Made To Love Her, 1967
This is one of my favorite little-known Stevie tracks, also from that wonderful in between period as he geared up to take full creative control of his music. It’s the very last track on this album and it suffers from that “oh I guess I didn’t make it to the end” thing that has made many a good song go unheard.
His non-cover songs up until this point generally fall into two categories: uptempo major-key happy grooves (”Uptight (Everything’s Alright)”, “Angel Baby”) and slow & midtempo songs of many stripes that all seem to sound mostly happy regardless of whether they’re love songs or the-other-side-of-love songs (see “Send Me Some Lovin’” and “I’d Cry” on this same album). To my knowledge this is his first uptempo, dark, minor-key song and he lets loose on it.
The vocals are complemented by a very fuzzy/buzzy Funkadelic-esque electric guitar pattern that repeats as the chords behind it descend and the most perfectly sour piano I’ve heard in a while. You can hear it best at 2:02 when the vocals drop out (it instantly makes me picture an upright piano from my elementary school that was slightly out of tune, had a muffled sound and had about three keys that just didn’t play); the grand imperfection of it adds another dimension to the rawness of this track.
In J Dilla’s last interview (in the May/June Scratch Magazine) he says, “I used to listen to records and actually, I wouldn’t say look for mistakes, but when I heard mistakes in records it was exciting for me.” Someone please sample the piano at 2:02, slow it down, add some drums and send it to me. Thanks.
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