Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think we've debunked the myth of talent. It doesn't appear that there's anything like a music gene or center in the brain that Stevie Wonder has that nobody else has.
I can't ignore what I grew up listening to. My parents used to listen to Michael Jackson non-stop. They used to listen to Luther Vandross, Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder.
I have been known to play a few rounds in my time. I'm not obsessive; I don't play in the dark, but even that's not out of the question because Stevie Wonder is also a golfer.
The guys that I look up to - Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder - were always in touch with an emotion that is familiar to every man: the emotion of love for a woman. That's what I do.
I've always wanted to be mentioned in the same sentence or at the same time that you say Quincy Jones or you say Stevie Wonder. I never thought that could possibly ever happen.
I mostly listen to very popular songs. But I'm a huge fan of Stevie Wonder, and I love jazz - Glenn Fredly, Diah Lestari - so 80% jazz, 20% mixed with everything - disco, hip hop.
I'm a true believer that unless you're Prince or Stevie Wonder - and even Prince is showing that he needs help - not everybody can produce themselves. I'm definitely not that person.
You knew the difference between Barbra Streisand and Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles, straight away. Now everyone sounds like each other, and I don't think that's right.
I like pop music, especially Crosby, Nash, Stills and Young, Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon - he's broken up with Art Garfunkel hasn't he? - but I can't study while pop music is playing.
I spent a lot time with my siblings because there weren't too many young people on our block. We were our own best friends: making dances to a Stevie Wonder songs and singing with my mom.
Early inspirations included Michael Jackson, Prince, Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye, Lionel Richie... Those were the people I actually wound up studying just to hone my craft.
We had some Stevie Wonder and Luther Vandross, but there's a lot of hip-hop and other black music that I just never grew up on. My parents didn't listen to anything other than black gospel.
Lauryn Hill, P-Funk, Marvin Gaye, Public Enemy - I have a very diverse palate for music. I can go from Judy Garland to Jimi Hendrix to Stevie Wonder to Rachmaninoff. I just love great music.
Nobody put the camera on the background singers who were singing. It was on Stevie Wonder. It was on Elton John. It was on whoever was the lead singer out front. We were 20 feet from stardom.
I grew up in the '70s, and I hear in my own stuff a lot of what I grew up listening to, which is to say I hear a lot of Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Stevie Wonder.
I grew up in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn, and my mom and pop had an extensive record collection, so Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and all of those sounds and souls of Motown filled the house.
The world of Stevie Wonder - in particular, the kind of overflowing joy that exists in every single thing I've ever heard him do, every note he sings - that is so deeply inspiring to me in every way.
I'm influenced a lot by Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, even Paul Weller - Billie Holiday as well: People who wrote and sang songs that were reflective of their times. I quite like that. I quite admire that.
I think I'm more influenced, just in general, not by blues artists, but more by stuff from Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder is probably my biggest musical influence of all. And Donny Hathaway.
'Master Blaster,' by Stevie Wonder, is up-tempo and fun, like Stevie himself. Stevie's always making jokes; he really knows how to put people at ease. He's one of my inspirations, as a musician and a person.
For me, the '80s was great because you had Boy George, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Prince, and Cyndi Lauper. No one put boxes saying this is urban, this is popular, this is underground. It was just good or bad.
'The Muppet Show' was huge. I watched it all the time as a kid, and I really loved the way they used music on that. I also remember hearing the radio in the car as a kid, like Stevie Wonder and Simon and Garfunkel.
I sang 'All Of Me' at the wedding. I sang 'Stay With You' from my first album. And then Stevie Wonder came up and sang 'Ribbon In the Sky.' It was impromptu... It was cool... He's always been a friend and a mentor to me.
I had the great opportunity to work with some of the greatest artists - the Beach Boys, the Temptations, the Four Tops. Otis Redding. Wilson Pickett. Stevie Wonder. So many great singers. And don't forget Clarence Carter!
I love producing, writing. I rarely write with other writers unless I have a real great respect for them. Like Burt Bacharach, or Carole Sager, or Stevie Wonder. Somebody like Smokey - like that. Otherwise, I choose to write alone.
I grew up listening to a lot of hiphop music and R'n'B. Bands like A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Big Daddy Kane, Boogie Down Productions, Cypress Hill, New Edition, Bob Marley, Prince, Stevie Wonder, and a lot of Spanish music.
I loved things like Destiny's Child, and Amy Winehouse's first record came out when I was 11 years old. But as a young, young child, I was just surrounded by Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston, Chaka Khan - just massive, soulful voices.
Raphael Saadiq said to me, quite often, that Chuck D was his history teacher. And so he got a lot from the music, things that he wasn't getting maybe in school. And I feel the same way with regards to Earth, Wind & Fire, Stevie Wonder.
I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know. And writing Langston Hughes replica poems became me wanting to write like Stevie Wonder.
The one thing about Essex is that there's a lot of people there that are into their soul music. And I'm talking '80s and '70s soul music, that was a big part of my childhood, there was Al Green, Luther Vandross, Stevie Wonder, people like that.
I love Radiohead, which most people don't expect, and I listen to everything from Stevie Wonder to Steely Dan, Carole King, The Beach Boys, The Kinks, Beyonce Knowles, Vampire Weekend, The Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Burt Bacharach, and Paul Simon.
We can watch videos of our whole journey - from old tours to doing the AMAs (American Music Awards) in 2013 and through the 'Star Wars' medley or when we sang with Stevie Wonder on the Grammys. I just sit back and say, 'I can't believe we did all this!'
A lot of music influences me in other ways than this, but I've always taken a lot of influence from Stevie Wonder, Frank Ocean, and Jeff Rosenstock for the Rex music. They were also the first three artists that released albums where I enjoyed every song.
My father was in a dance band, and I wanted to do what he did, play the saxophone, but I couldn't blow a note, so he suggested the guitar. Chromatic harmonica was actually my first instrument, and I got very good at it - not quite Stevie Wonder, but very good.
Just coming from a musical family, I was always surrounded by it. On the car rides to school, my mom loved playing A Tribe Called Quest and the Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,' and then my dad was listening to a lot of Bill Withers and Stevie Wonder.
I think there's a void for some authentic soul music with an edge. I think there's some people who grew up with Motown and Stevie Wonder that still can appreciate Future, Drake, and all these different things, too, but there shouldn't be a void for those people, as well.
I grew up listening to pop music with my dad in the car, and we'd just listen to Stevie Wonder, Al Green, Earth Wind & Fire, KC and the Sunshine Band - all that good stuff. So to see it snaking its way back around again is really exciting, and I love listening to the radio.
I say that I do soul, R&B music. I have so many influences, from Billie Holiday, Nina Simone to Stevie Wonder and Prince and even Al Green and Bjork. And a lot of hip hop music has influenced me a lot - you know - De La Soul and Digital Underground and A Tribe Called Quest.
When I was a young teenager, it was all about The Clash for me and that sort of English punk stuff. Then the Clash led me to all these other kinds of music: classic rock, Stevie Wonder, world music, and Brazilian music. I got serious about jazz when I was probably about 14 or 15.
I am in love with old school funk and soul music. That's what I grew up listening to, and I want to bring that style back with my music. I love artists like Stevie Wonder, Donna Summer, Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Earth, Wind, & Fire, Bruno Mars, Justin Timberlake, and more!
There are so many forms of soul: David Bowie was soulful as hell; Johnny Cash was soulful as hell; you also have a Prince, a Stevie Wonder. I want to bring my perception of that and not live inside the box of, 'This is the type of tracks you get,' 'This is the type of drums you get.'
We got word that Mick Jagger heard our first album and liked it. And he wanted us to open for the Stones in Hawaii. That just blew us away. But the next thing I heard was that Stevie Wonder opened for them here in the States and actually got booed at one show. So I was scared to death.
I like Stevie Wonder as my favorite non-pianist pianist. I mean, I shouldn't call him a non-pianist, because he's really a great pianist, but he doesn't feature it that much - he uses his keyboards and his piano technique to support his great songs and so forth, but he can really blow.
At the 'L.A. Times,' I always wanted to write about artists I thought were meaningful. So I interviewed Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Eminem, White Stripes. And I could understand how almost everybody I interviewed had a sense of artistry.
I was backstage at the House of Blues in L.A where I was about to perform, and Stevie Wonder and Prince turned up at my dressing room together! Stevie started beat boxing and Prince started singing one of my songs, all of a sudden it was like I was in a cypher with these incredible artists.
What's important is that people realize that I can't be put into a box musically. I've studied all forms of music; I know probably more Jay-Z songs than the biggest Jay-Z fan. I've studied R. Kelly to the Isley Brothers to Stevie Wonder to Sting and Sade. You don't have one personality every day. You don't have one mood.
I was the first artist, I think, to ever do an all-keyboard album. There were things that resembled it, like Stevie Wonder. A lot of his stuff was on keyboards, but he used brass and he used other things as well. I was the first artist, also, to use drum machines. I was really the one who kind of started that whole thing.
You always draw from your roots. I'm influenced by everything I hear and see, and that includes music today, but obviously I go back to my early influences: Stevie Wonder, Parliament, Earth, Wind & Fire, Ohio Players, Average White Band. Those kind of artists are what I look to. When I hear that stuff on the radio, I turn it up!
I used to be a pop singer; well, not used to be. I am an R&B singer. My emphasis was on Stevie Wonder and Chaka Khan and Aretha Franklin.
What I love about Stevie Wonder is the way he makes people feel. He's one of the best examples of how music can heal.