Fulfillingness' First Finale was released in 1974, following Innervisions. Much of the programme turns toward a more personal and reflective mood, without abandoning public concerns. Its value lies partly in that adjustment of scale rather than in repeating the previous album's breadth.
Music of My Mind is the pivot point: the moment Stevie Wonder swapped Motown’s assembly line for a one-man synth lab. It is not warm. It is not nostalgic. It is precise, integrated, and politically aware — and it changed how soul records could be made.
A keyboard-led pivot from Motown’s strings to synthesised soul—tight, live, and decisive.
Recorded largely single-handed with the TONTO synthesizer rig and released three days before the car crash that nearly ended his career, Innervisions finds Stevie Wonder swapping love songs for reportage, from drug addiction and urban decay to a coded jab at the White House.
Made after Stevie Wonder seriously considered leaving music to work with disabled children abroad, and released only once he had signed one of the largest recording contracts in history, this double album plus bonus EP moves through faith, parenthood, injustice and romance while Wonder plays the overwhelming majority of the instruments himself.