NEW YORK, NY.- In 1972 — half a century ago — Stevie Wonder reinvented the sound of pop by embracing all he could accomplish on his own.

He released two albums that year: “Music of My Mind” in March and then, less than eight months later, on Oct. 27, the even more confident and far-reaching “Talking Book.”

“Talking Book” was a breakthrough on multiple fronts. It demonstrated, with the international smash “Superstition,” that Wonder didn’t need Motown’s “hit factory” methods — songwriters and producers providing material that singers would dutifully execute — to have a No. 1 pop blockbuster.

Wonder had given signs on earlier albums that he would not just be writing love songs. “Talking Book” reaffirmed that, and also extended his sonic and technological ambitions, as he used state-of-the-art synthesizers and an arsenal of studio effects to orchestrate his songs with startlingly novel sounds. And its album cover — which showed Wonder wearing African-style robes and braided hair in a quasi-biblical desert landscape (actually Los Angeles) — made clear that Wonder’s futurism was unmistakably Afrofuturism.

Although Wonder had just reached voting age, he was no novice when he made “Music of My Mind” and “Talking Book.” They were his 14th and 15th albums in a decadelong career that stretched back to his days as Little Stevie Wonder. During his teens, Wonder revealed musicianship that was both richly and widely grounded — in gospel, R&B, jazz, show tunes, folk, pop, country, classical music and more — and playfully but determinedly recombinant.

Wonder’s first Motown Records contract ended as he turned 21 in 1971. Other labels were eager to sign him, and when he returned to the Black-owned Motown, he had won complete creative control for himself. He made an unexpected choice as his first collaborators: Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, a team of musicians, producers and engineers.

In what were still the early days of synthesizers, Cecil and Margouleff had constructed a Frankenstein monster of an instrument they called TONTO (which they retronymed The Original New Timbral Orchestra), which connected modules and keyboards from Moog, Arp and other manufacturers and figured out a way for the formerly incompatible devices to control one another. It weighed more than a ton.

In a test run — a three-day weekend working together in the studio — Wonder wrote 17 songs. From 1972 to 1974, they would make four landmark albums: “Music of My Mind,” “Talking Book,” “Innervisions” and “Fulfillingness’ First Finale.”

The early 1970s were a wide-open — and in retrospect simply remarkable — era for R&B that melded social consciousness and musical creativity. Groups like Sly and the Family Stone and the late-’60s Temptations had shown that psychedelic soul hits could carry strong messages, and in the early ’70s, songwriters like Marvin Gaye and groups like Earth, Wind & Fire, Parliament-Funkadelic, the O’Jays and Labelle explored utopian dreams and street-level insights in songs that united the sophistication of jazz with the earthiness of funk and rock. These were parallel explorations, often with large stage and studio bands; meanwhile, Wonder found a path of his own, nearly solo.

“Music of My Mind,” the first album under the new Motown contract, started to probe Wonder’s newfound freedom; then “Talking Book” reveled in it. It’s an album mostly of songs about love: euphoric, heartbroken, jealous, regretful, longing, anticipatory. Yet love songs like “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” and “Lookin’ for Another Pure Love” don’t confine themselves to the ups and downs of individual romance; their love can encompass family, friends, community and faith.

Midway through, the album brandishes a pair of hard-nosed reality checks. In “Superstition,” Wonder warns against gullibility and received opinion, and in “Big Brother,” Wonder sings “I live in the ghetto” and denounces a sanctimonious politician who wants his vote but is “tired of me protesting/children dying every day.”

Wonder influenced generations of singers with his voice on “Talking Book”; he talks, croons, teases, preaches, moans, barks, growls. It’s not exactly gospel, blues, soul, rock or jazz; it’s all of them at once, and it gives every note he sings an unpredictable life of its own. The album’s arrangements are lean and contrapuntal, uncushioned, making every note earn its place both as a melodic line and a rhythmic push. Yet their precision doesn’t make them anywhere near mechanical. The whole production is set in a surreal, elastic, immersive electronic space that’s far more familiar now than it was 50 years ago.

None of that ingenuity would matter if the songs weren’t substantial and touching. Wonder sings about love going right, and love going very wrong. The album ends with “I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever),” a Beatles-tinged three-episode song in which the singer picks himself up from “shattered dreams,” imagines the bliss of endless love, invokes God, then segues into a bluesy come-on to “the girl that I adore.” The romance is all still hypothetical; the sheer joy is not. And every note comes from Wonder himself.

“Talking Book” was not only a hit album, but also a harbinger of R&B and pop that would be increasingly electronic and synthetic, proudly unbound by physical realities. One of Wonder’s many gifts to music was that even as he created the artificial sound-worlds of his songs, he made sure they were brimming with humanity.

In a series of interviews, 27 of the countless musicians and listeners who created and have been inspired by “Talking Book” discuss the album, song by song. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.

— JON PARELES

Track 1: You Are the Sunshine of My Life

DIONNE WARWICK (musician): That song, it’s not only one of my favorites, it has to be the world’s favorite. “Sunshine” gave me this inclination of how romantic he could be in expressing his feelings — it could be applied to a young lady, it could be applied to a child, it could be applied to his mother (who he happened to have adored), and friendships.

BERRY GORDY (founder, Motown Records): “Talking Book” is a masterpiece that solidified and secured Stevie Wonder’s stature as a superstar for the ages. He had turned 21 the year before we released the album. By that time he had made it very clear to me that he wanted total creative control of his music, and he had a good idea of what he was doing. Strangely enough, I agreed with him all the way. That’s when I realized the progression the “12-year-old genius,” Little Stevie Wonder, had made — from that high-pitched voice, banging on bongos and mastering the harmonica, to a full-voiced singer, awesome writer, multi-instrumentalist and producer.

From the moment we heard the “Music of My Mind” album, released earlier in the same year, I knew Stevie was ready to fly. With “Talking Book,” his brilliance and creativity soared to a whole new level, surpassing all expectations. It was the beginning of what we’d hear from him during the coming decades in his storytelling, sharing his truth and his resonating views of society. Throughout the ’70s he controlled the charts and the Grammys with hit after hit. So allowing him creative control turned out to be one of the best deals I ever made.

DAVID SANBORN (musician, played alto saxophone on “Talking Book”): I was touring with Stevie in his band, right after he made “Music of My Mind” and decided to break free of the Motown production team. There was a little tension there, and I think he was chafing at the confines of what he felt Motown was imposing on him. His manager got him a slot opening for the Rolling Stones in 1972, and every day at soundcheck, he would come in with a new song or a new idea.

ROBERT MARGOULEFF (associate producer and cover photographer, “Talking Book”): We always had difficulty getting Stevie to choose which songs to put on the album because he had so many of them. As usual, he always wanted to include everything. And Malcolm [Cecil, associate producer] said: “Steve, you know, this is an album. It’s not a talking book.”

At that time a talking book was how blind people could read books. They were recorded at half the speed of an LP, at 16 2/3, and therefore ran twice as long. Then Malcolm said, “Oh, I think you should call this album ‘Talking Book.’” Stevie liked it.

Stevie had tons of songs. And how does he remember the lyrics to every song? The answer was he didn’t remember the lyrics to every song. Malcolm would sit there at the console, at the microphone, saying, “You are the sunshine of my life,” and Stevie would sing it. And while he was finishing the line, Malcolm was reading the next line of the song. But very often, if you soloed some of those tracks, the vocal tracks, you’d hear that fairly clipped British accent reciting the words behind Stevie. In order to silence that, we took white Styrofoam coffee cups, and I stuffed them with the foam liner from the inside of a tape box, and we put them on the earphones so the audio wouldn’t leak from the headphones. It looked ludicrous.

BILL FRISELL (musician): There was the melody aspect that was always in his stuff, but there were also things that were happening with the harmony, and things modulating in unusual ways. It was radical, but it could touch everyone somehow.

SMOKEY ROBINSON (musician): “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” is a classic record, and it’s going to be around forever.

Track 2: Maybe Your Baby

RAPHAEL SAADIQ (musician and producer): The marriage between his Clavinet and his Moog, the tenor of his voice and his instruments. I feel like those instruments were made for Stevie: Clavinet, Fender Rhodes, acoustic drums. In “Maybe Your Baby,” you have the sped-up vocals in the end — he was speeding up vocals before a lot of people. Him coming from Detroit, and singing with these gospel tones, these Motown inflections — I just felt a little bit of Sly and the Family Stone in that vocal, too. There’s a lot of different ear candy going on.

ROBERT GLASPER (musician): If you’re not funky, the Clavinet will definitely expose that. Nobody plays the Clav like Stevie; he’s literally the undisputed champ of the Clavinet, hands down.

Track 3: You and I

CORINNE BAILEY RAE (musician): I love the vocal performance — the unbridled, passionate release, and that place he gets to in the end chorus where he climbs and climbs. Stevie has this thing in his recordings where it just feels like he’s completely without fear and self-consciousness. It’s the lack of hiddenness in the music; the heart is really at the surface.

JANELLE MONÁE (musician and actress): Listening to that song, I’m in a deep puddle of tears. This album has a special quality, a special thing to just connect with the God inside of you — God being love, love for oneself, love for one’s partner, love for one’s mother, brother, sister, love for the marginalized, love for this country.

SNOH AALEGRA (musician): To me, it’s one of the most beautiful love songs of all time. It’s hopeful, it’s to the point; it’s celebrating ultimate love with a drop of melancholy. When he says, “We can conquer the world” — it’s just the ultimate feeling when you’re in love, when you feel like everything is possible with this person.

KENNY GARRETT (musician): As a kid, that song was pretty haunting. I didn’t understand the words at the time, but the music drew me in. He and the synthesizers sounded dark in some ways, but it’s still touching my heart.

I always thought about Stevie as really being a jazz musician. There’s something different; there’s a little more substance there.

JACOB COLLIER (musician): I did an arrangement of “You and I,” it was the first Grammy I ever won. The idea of you and I can mean two lovers, it can mean a brother and a sister or a mother and a son, or someone who is not there, or two different parts of yourself — there’s so many different ways you can approach the idea of two.

The kind of inevitable-feeling modulations is one thing. He starts in F-sharp major, which is one of his favorite keys, and then he just slips into E flat halfway through the verse and you don’t even notice.

Back in ’72, there were these monophonic synths where you had to play each note one at a time. And there’s one of these really characterful little passageways that he carves into the song. At that time, the world was learning what on earth a synthesizer was, and I think Stevie was the first person who really made it sing like that. And he had this lovely way of intuitively layering sounds. Rather than them feeling like lots of layers that have different feelings, they all felt like the same expression of the same instrument, which is like Stevie. Stevie is an instrument.

NNENNA FREELON (musician): That tune was not only a love song, talking about “you and I can conquer the world.” But at the end when he modulates, he’s saying “you and I,” people! He’s saying the community, the collective “you and I,” he reiterates it, and then he modulates up to emphasize “we”: “We can conquer the world.” It’s all available to us. So affirming.

He’s a soothsayer. He’s a truth teller. He’s a griot. I can’t look at him in isolation as a young artist then, because I see him in the body of his work, now. But even then, I imagine he had elements of this very wise, worldly view of love and social change. And love as social change. Like when we love each other, when we go through whatever it is we go through — loving and losing — our humanity is impacted by that. A lot of artists who are successful don’t want to take those risks to bring on social commentary into their music. But at the very root of speaking truth to power is love.

Track 4: Tuesday Heartbreak

MACY GRAY (musician, released her own remake of “Talking Book” in 2012): You know, nobody ever talks about Tuesday! Just Fridays and Mondays and the weekend.

DAVID SANBORN: The Stones had invited us up to a party the night before our first show, and we partied until about 7 or 8 in the morning. I got back to my hotel, and I got a call from Bob Margouleff saying: “Hey, Stevie wants you in the studio. Can you get over here right now?” They played a new tune down and I played along with it a little bit to find my way. And at the end of that fiddling around, I said, “OK, I’m ready to do one.” And Stevie came on the intercom and said, “No, no, that’s great.” Later, the record came out, and there I was. It was my run through — I’m learning the song on the solo that I’m playing. Of course I would love to have another crack at it, but at this point in history that seems a little unlikely.

RAPHAEL SAADIQ: His rhythms on the drums; his rhythm on the Clavinet; his diction and his swag when he’s singing, “I wanna be with you when the nighttime comes.” Every two bars, his character gets sweeter and different. You can feel his analog performance, which is something that’s missing in music today.

DENIECE WILLIAMS (musician, sang backing vocals on “Tuesday Heartbreak”): It just kind of came together in the studio; we’d never performed it and we didn’t know what we were going to be singing that day. But actually that was typical Stevie. He would gather us around and he would play it on the piano, and he would sing the melody note of what the backgrounds were going to sing, and then of course, we knew the three-part harmony to break it up, and so that’s what we did.

I started with Stevie in 1971. My cousin John got me the audition. His grandmother and my grandmother were sisters, and at big family dinners, he would brag that he knew Stevie. But for seven years I never believed him; I kept telling him, “Pinocchio, your nose is growing.” At the audition, some had piano players, most of them had music and all I had was me. Stevie called me up and I started singing “Teach Me Tonight” with him, and the next thing I knew, everybody in the room had broken into four-part harmony — it was beautiful.

Track 5: You’ve Got It Bad Girl

MAKAYA McCRAVEN (musician): The way the melody is harmonized is a little bit unconventional, bringing in denser, thicker, more rich, lush harmony than you might hear in a pop song, and the way that translates, he’s crossing genres and adding elements of jazz and classical music. There’s a variety of arranging techniques and orchestrations with the different synthesizers and sounds.

CECILE McLORIN SALVANT (musician): That is a song I want to sing. That beginning is so chromatic, climbing up and climbing down. And the quality of his voice is very sort of airy and it’s also so mysterious. It felt unusual and strange and perfect.




VERDINE WHITE (musician, Earth Wind & Fire): That’s the beginning of the era of really hip music, the early ’70s — the chord changes, the sound, the synthesizers. As we call it in the business, it was a very hip tune. He was progressing toward that way, with the synthesizers. He was the only one that could do it like that on a full record.

JASON TAWKIN (studio and electronics engineer, National Music Centre, current home of TONTO): One of the things that I noticed when listening back to “Talking Book” is that there is this very strong, rich, deep bass. But it sits below everything else, so it doesn’t impede on things like the vocal and the other elements. That’s one of the most quintessential TONTO and Stevie Wonder sounds.

At that time, these were all brand-new sounds, totally mind blowing. We’ve become desensitized to the fact that these were otherworldly, exciting sounds because we’re surrounded by them now — our phone is beeping at us all day long. In the early ’70s, these instruments hadn’t proved viable as regular pop instruments. They were seen as these fringe, crazy scientific things. And it was records like this that made them part of the popular vernacular.

ROBERT MARGOULEFF: I think it was Memorial Day weekend, 1971. We were sitting in Malcolm’s apartment, and the windows were open facing 57th Street. And it’s just getting dark when we hear, “Hey, Malcolm, Malcolm!”

We run over to the window and there’s Ronnie Blanco, a friend of Malcolm’s. “I’ve got this guy here who really wants to see the instrument and talk to you.” I look down and there’s Stevie standing in a chartreuse green jumpsuit with our album “Zero Time” under his arm.

TONTO was just huge. It wasn’t in that fancy case at that point. It looked like a corpse covered in wires. It was on a gurney and we’d roll it around in the studio.

Stevie says, “I really want to see what you’re doing.” The studio was locked up — it was closed for the holiday — but we took him downstairs to Studio B and he put his hands all over the synthesizer. I guided him around, Malcolm and I got up a sound, and then he said: “Man, there’s something wrong with this instrument. I’m playing all these notes and it’s not happening.” And Malcolm says: “Well, you have to think about the synthesizer like you would think about a saxophone. It only plays one note or event at a time. But that note, you have to put all your being into it, just like embouchure, breath, attitude. All that stuff has to go into one note.”

Once he got that, it was all over. If you listen to those records carefully, you’ll see how small the sounds really are. It’s like a string quartet. There’s not polyphonic everything, it’s not all soupy or filled with stuff. It’s all Steve’s approach. He knew when he laid something down where to leave a hole for something else. The entire chart is in his head.

ESPERANZA SPALDING: A lot of what you’re hearing is that spirit of jazz music, which is full of changes, because it was born of a people who were constantly grappling with the dynamic shifts of oppression and found a way to create a through line of beauty and coherency through those changes. That’s part of why you hear a lot of movement, a lot of chord changes in, quote unquote, jazz music. And Stevie Wonder is a student of that lineage and of that technology, so he’s bringing it into the music.

I feel he set the standard for how to bring a sense of spirit and humanness out of those machines, because he’s so filled with spirit and heart. Here are these computers and these machines, and here is an example of how you can bring so much feeling and swing. Not that an organic sense is somehow better. It’s just, it’s possible for it to feel soulful.

JOHN FRUSCIANTE (musician, Red Hot Chili Peppers): In the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, jazz and pop music were linked. A lot of what was called pop music was jazz, right? Everything got simplified in the ’50s, when rock ’n’ roll came along. But Stevie Wonder’s approach to chord progressions on an album like “Talking Book” has so much to do with the history of jazz and with influences like Duke Ellington. In the ’70s, as a little child, I remember my parents had the records, and to a little kid’s mind it seemed as catchy and as poppy as anything. But as an adult, as I’ve studied it, I realized that he was keeping this link between jazz and pop alive.

Track 6: Superstition

ROBERT MARGOULEFF: We were at Electric Lady. Malcolm and I had set up every instrument that we thought Steve could use in a big circle in the studio: the acoustic piano, the Rhodes, the Clavinet, the synthesizer. He walked into the studio and said: “Bob! Malcolm! I have a really good idea for a song.”

Without any kind of a click track, with the song totally in his head, he sat down and played the drum track for “Superstition.” He sat down at the drums and in 10 or 15 minutes, he said, “That’s it.” We said: “It’s great. Now what?” He said, “Let’s make the bass sound.” We whipped up the synthesizer stuff, and boom! That was the beginning of “Superstition.” Working like that was like a fever dream.

MAKAYA McCRAVEN: It’s a great example of Stevie on the drums. That feel and the groove — I think a lot of us drummers have spent time trying to dig in and get out of it, and figure out what that thing is.

That riff is one of the first things that brought me to studying keyboard at all, which is a large part of my composition now. The groove is super-tight, but I think there’s a looseness about the way he plays that is the special thing. To get the feel, that takes a bit more nuance, time, effort and intent.

ROBERT GLASPER: Stevie has a certain slop on drums. That’s what we call it. It’s the Stevie slop. He made it OK that he’s sloppy. He has a sloppy funk. It’s not tight funk, it’s not neat, it’s not perfect, but it feels amazing. “Superstition” wouldn’t be the same without that particular drumbeat and that style of how he’s playing it.

CORY HENRY (musician, Snarky Puppy): I love the lyrics of “Superstition.” I love what he says: “When you believe in things that you don’t understand, then you suffer.” That’s one of my favorite lyrics of all time because I feel like as people, we take hold to a lot of traditions and a lot of things that predate us and still live our lives based on things that we don’t understand, and we suffer as a result of it.

I think it’s a shot at religion; I think it’s a shot at politics; I think it’s a shot at government or banking systems or [laughs] the stock market. People believe in that thing, crazy! It’s a deep lyric; it’s kind of universal. It’s like a scripture.

NNENNA FREELON: Stevie had this unique ability to make you feel as a young, emerging Black person in the ’70s, he was a seer. His work created the soundtrack to millions of young and not-so-young Black people. He actually turned the lens to his own experience. And by doing that, he allowed us to see ourselves in a culture that ignored us, or portrayed us in very negative ways.

And his disability, if you want to call it that, on “Talking Book,” he laid that bare. He’s a person who can’t see, yet he allowed us to see ourselves in such unique ways. It’s astounding to me. And maybe a little bit lost on young people today, who see themselves more in various ways than they did back then in the ’70s. You didn’t see Black people in magazines; very few on television, except in very constricted, stereotypical roles. So African American people went to the music for love, for affirmation, for a sense that, yeah, we are here. For that “mmhmm” moment. When “Talking Book” came out, we ate that whole record up. The whole record! Side A and Side B. Because the whole record told a story.

Track 7: Big Brother

ROBERT MARGOULEFF: Malcolm would read stuff to Stevie. He read him pieces from George Orwell, from “1984.” One day Stevie said, “Malcolm, Malcolm, I have a new song.”

“Stevie, it’s not another love song, is it?”

“Oh, no, no,” he said. “I wrote about Big Brother.”

The real essence of what drove me toward Stevie, and the really deeply emotional commitment that lasts even to this day, is his political sensibility and his real understanding of the Black condition. Really, we need more Stevie Wonders today.

CORINNE BAILEY RAE: It’s a clever name — of all the love songs, it’s the first one which is about being watched. “Big Brother” is just sitting underneath “Superstition”; he’s moving toward a political consciousness that continues from here. He has a unique perspective, it feels like a lived experience.

MACY GRAY: It’s just a great way to talk about our government because it’s still relevant to what goes on in the minds of people who don’t get all the benefits and all the perks. And to put that in a song without preaching — he’s just talking about a perspective, and a feeling. You can sing that song today and it still makes sense. Every generation knows what he’s talking about.

NNENNA FREELON: It’s not one of the ones that was really aired on the radio that much. But because we all had the LP, we all dug what he was saying, right? We all dug that we were in a political environment that was hostile to us.

JANELLE MONÁE: This album really made me become who I am — to take risks and be and be all of me. This album was the You print. Not the blueprint. Because he was so much himself, and he spoke about so many different topics on one album, and it sounded incredible. And so it helped me to also be confident in knowing that I can do that and I can take it even further. And that there’s somebody who had come before me, who was Black, who looked like me, who dreamed big, who cared about community, who valued love and valued bringing people together, and also protecting marginalized people as well. This album did just like an exceptional job of creating a world where the artists can play.

Track 8: Blame It on the Sun

PJ MORTON (musician): I’m a preacher’s kid. “Blame It on the Sun” has a lot of church worship-type things, to me. [Sings] “But my heart blames it on me,” to my young ears, those chords really spoke to me.

I’m in the tradition of using that soul, using that gospel, using that church in songs that aren’t necessarily gospel. I think the advantage of that is connecting directly to the soul. It’s not just me talking about love. It goes deep; what pours out of the heart connects with the heart. I don’t think Stevie exists without both of those things working together.

JACOB COLLIER: It’s just amazing to be listening to someone’s mind map out a vernacular, like language. Songs like “Blame It on the Sun” or “Tuesday Heartbreak” are just these gorgeous little shapes. People don’t necessarily know all the words to them, but they’re equally as meaningful to me as a fan, if not more than the big hits, because that’s where the real curiosity was awake.

KAMASI WASHINGTON (musician): I just love the melody. That lyric, “I blame it on the sun,” it’s just powerful. That whole idea of feeling something, but then trying to push it off for something else. His music feels uncompromised and made me feel like I could do that too: I didn’t have to compromise.

Track 9: Lookin’ for Another Pure Love

RAPHAEL SAADIQ: The background vocals act as strings. I like how Stevie’s singing goes to the bridge, and Jeff Beck comes in. When I listen to Jeff Beck coming out of Stevie’s voice into his solo, and after he’s done soloing Stevie starts singing and they enter playing together — it’s just so warm and so natural. I would love to hear that on records — to grab people from other parts of the music world, and get them together to make music.

PJ MORTON: More than any other Stevie song, it’s the one that pops up in my head randomly. The verses just have a flow — I love how where it goes from the verse to the chorus. The verse, that’s not a pop melody that just anybody can sing along with, but then it goes into this simple chorus that anybody could sing. It’s almost like being an evangelist, or a warrior, for love.

ROBERT GLASPER: When I hear that chorus, it reminds me of a country song, and Stevie Wonder loved country music.

Track 10: I Believe (When I Fall in Love It’ll Be Forever)

DAVID SANBORN: What I love about that song is the end, when he goes into that long, funky vamp. He just changes character in the middle. He had all these vocal qualities, these characters that he could put on. I don’t mean in a superficial sense; his technical, emotional range led him to all these different places.

He could write the parts because he played all the instruments, so he could either play it himself or tell everybody what to do — use their gifts to help him find another place, kind of like what Duke Ellington did. Stevie was also a great producer. He knew how to get the right sounds.

PETRA HADEN (musician): One of the first songs I heard him sing was “Stay Gold” when I saw the movie “The Outsiders.” I just fell in love with it — his voice, and how he sings with such feeling, like I felt it in me. And when I listened to “I Believe,” I felt the same feeling. I just fell in love with it because of his voice. It’s very mystical.

That’s one of the reasons I wanted to do the song with Bill [Frisell], is that it has a mystical and magical feeling. For me to love a love song, it has to move me, and this love song goes from minor to major. The minor part is the sadness and loneliness, and when it changes to major there’s hope and love.

Love ends up not necessarily winning, but love is very important. Loneliness can be healed by love. So if I’m in a bad mood, or a sad mood, and I listen to that song, it immediately makes me feel good. And that’s what music is all about.

JOSH GROBAN (musician): It has the light and the dark. It has the vulnerability and the breakdown of talking about how lost somebody can feel. And I think that the “you” in that song is just kind of a whoever — my interpretation is that it’s a “you” that hasn’t been discovered yet. And I think there’s something really, really powerful about that — to be openhearted like that.

One of the reasons it’s fun to cover is that it’s a challenge that I like as a vocalist, especially as a vocalist who came from more of a traditional vocal training standpoint. You can’t sing one of Stevie Wonder’s songs and not feel it in a way that will pull you from any kind of cerebral technique. No matter how hard you try, the heart and soul of his melodies and his lyrics are going to take you to the good stuff — whether or not you’re thinking about whether that note is my range, or whether I’m feeling OK or tired, or whatever it is.

Stevie Wonder has fantastic vocal technique. But there is that invitation in his music, and especially in a song like this, to just let go.

CECILE McLORIN SALVANT: It is such an end-credits song. I wonder if he was thinking of this as a movie. You’ve gone through this whole journey and finally there’s the repetitive thing, “I believe when I fall in love.” It just keeps coming back and back and back again and never ends. And you don’t want it to end. What a great way to end an album.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.