Stevie Wonder's Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants"

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Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants"
StevieWonder-JourneyThroughtheSecretLifeofPlants.jpg
Soundtrack album by
ReleasedOctober 30, 1979
RecordedFebruary–April 1979
StudioI.A.M. Studios, Irvine, California (International Automated Media); Crystal Recording Studio, Hollywood, California; Lyon Recording Studio, Newport Beach, California; Sigma Sound Studios, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Motown Recording Studios, Hollywood; Studio In The Country, Bogalusa, Louisiana
Genre
Length89:32
Label Tamla
Producer Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder chronology
Looking Back
(1977)
Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants"
(1979)
Hotter than July
(1980)
Singles from Stevie Wonder's Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants"
  1. "Send One Your Love"
    Released: November 1979
  2. "Black Orchid"
    Released: February 1980
  3. "Outside My Window"
    Released: May 1980

Stevie Wonder's Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants" is an album by Stevie Wonder, originally released on the Tamla Motown label on October 30, 1979. It is the soundtrack to the documentary The Secret Life of Plants, directed by Walon Green, which was based on the book of the same name by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. It contains two singles that reached the Billboard Hot 100 charts: "Send One Your Love" (No. 4) and the minor hit "Outside My Window" (No. 52). The single "Black Orchid" reached No. 63 in the UK.

Contents

Production

Wonder created the film score by having Michael Braun, the film's producer, describe each visual image in detail, while the sound engineer, Gary Olazabal, specified the length of a passage. This information was processed to a four-track tape (with the film's sound on one of the tracks), leaving Wonder space to add his own musical accompaniment. [4] Wonder attempted to translate the complex information of the book and film into song lyrics. "Same Old Story," for example, tries to convey the scientific findings of Jagadish Chandra Bose, who developed instruments to measure plants' response to stimuli, and the breakthroughs of African-American agriculturalist George Washington Carver. While written mostly by Stevie Wonder, some songs were collaborations with Syreeta Wright, Yvonne Wright, and Michael Sembello.

Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants" contained new synthesizer combinations, including the first use of a digital sampling synthesizer, the Computer Music Melodian, [5] used in most tracks of this album. [6] Journey is an early digital recording, released three months after Ry Cooder's Bop till You Drop , generally believed to be the first digitally recorded popular music album, with this album being the second. Stevie Wonder was an early adherent of the technology and used it for all his subsequent recordings. The music was recorded onto U-matic video tapes using a Sony PCM-1600 digital PCM adaptor, and edited with a digital controller also from Sony. [7]

Packaging

Tamla/Motown originally released the album as a double LP in a tri-fold sleeve. [8] The front cover was embossed, and following Wonder's recent trend of printing Braille messages on his albums, the cover illustration was captioned below in Braille for blind readers:

⠄⠁⠃⠧ ⠯ ⠔⠎⠊⠙⠑ ⠮ ⠑⠍⠃⠕⠎⠎⠫ ⠎⠟⠥⠜⠑ ⠊⠎ ⠮ ⠳⠞⠇⠔⠑ ⠷ ⠁ ⠋⠇⠪⠻ ⠾ ⠧⠑⠔⠫ ⠇⠂⠧⠑⠎⠲
⠠⠌⠑⠧⠊⠑ ⠠⠺⠕⠝⠙⠻⠄⠎ ⠄⠚⠳⠗⠝⠑⠽ ⠄⠐⠹ ⠠⠮ ⠠⠎⠑⠉⠗⠑⠞ ⠠⠇⠊⠋⠑ ⠷ ⠠⠰⠏⠇⠁⠝⠞⠎⠲
"Above and inside the embossed square is the outline of a flower with veined leaves. Stevie Wonder's Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants." [9]

Initial pressings of the album were also scented with a floral perfume. [10]

Release

After Stevie Wonder's previous albums Innervisions (1973), Fulfillingness' First Finale (1974), and Songs in the Key of Life (1976) all won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, his next project was highly anticipated, and Motown marketed it aggressively. Although the Secret Life of Plants documentary film never received a wide release, Wonder's soundtrack album went all the way up to number four in the Rock and R&B Billboard charts in 1979 and was also certified platinum by Productores de Música de España, [11] while the single "Send One Your Love" also reached number four. However, sales tapered off quickly, and label head Berry Gordy reportedly complained that the one million copies he pressed turned out to be 900,000 too many. [9]

Promotion

Wonder supported the album in late 1979 with a six-city tour, performing nearly the entire album live with his band Wonderlove and the National Afro-American Philharmonic Orchestra (conducted by James Frazier Jr.). [12] Reflecting the orchestra's presence and the album's atmospheric tone, the tour venues included concert halls and opera houses. [13] The shows began with the Plants music (partially accompanied by film projections), followed by a second half spanning his career hits. [14]

DateCityVenue
November 28, 1979Chicago, Illinois Auditorium Theatre
November 29, 1979Detroit, Michigan Ford Auditorium
November 30, 1979Detroit, Michigan Cobo Arena
December 2, 1979New York, New York Metropolitan Opera House
December 3, 1979Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of Music
December 4, 1979Washington, D.C. DAR Constitution Hall
December 9, 1979New York, New York Madison Square Garden
December 18, 1979Pasadena, California Civic Auditorium

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar half.svgStar empty.svg [15]
Christgau's Record Guide B− [16]
DownBeat Star full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svgStar empty.svgStar empty.svg [17]
Pitchfork 7.7/10 [1]
Rolling Stone (mixed) [18]
Rolling StoneStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [19]
Smash Hits 6/10 [20]
Yahoo! Music (mixed) [21]
Baltimore Sun (favorable) [22]
New York Times (favorable) [23]

Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants" has sometimes been considered a "vague" and "overambitious" album; [24] it has been called "goofy", "nerdy", "odd", "pointless" and "foolish", [25] and for listeners and critics it was seen as too much of a departure from his string of melodic albums. [25] However, some critics have also described it as "courageous", "achingly sweet", and "bafflingly beautiful". [25] Stephen Holden in a review for the Village Voice remarked that the album has "the painful awkwardness of a barely literate sidewalk sermon", though Wonder "manages to transform even the worst of this drivel into a spiritual jargon that's virtually a different language; his very in-articulateness clears the way for us to tune in to the ineffable, nonrational flow that's his obsession." [26]

Wonder remarked in 2004 that the album "was an experimental project with me scoring and doing other things I like: challenging myself with all the things that entered my mind from the Venus's Flytrap to Earth's creation to coming back as a flower." [27]

The cover of the album was selected by Rolling Stone in 1991 for their list of 100 Classic Album Covers as a memorable example of album art. [28]

Cash Box said "Outside My Window" was a "truly joyous, pastoral love song, utilizing the universal image of the flower to lyrically represent all that is fair and beautiful in nature." [29] Record World said of it that "A deep, dense bassline is mixed alongside Wonder's uplifting vocals on this mid-tempo track." [30]

Solange Knowles named it as an influence on her 2019 album When I Get Home . [31]

KAINA covered the song "Come Back as a Flower" on her 2022 album It Was a Home . [32]

Track listing

All tracks written, produced and arranged by Stevie Wonder.

Side one

  1. "Earth's Creation" – 4:05 (Instrumental)
  2. "The First Garden" – 2:33 (Instrumental)
  3. "Voyage to India" – 6:23 (Instrumental)
  4. "Same Old Story" – 3:45
  5. "Venus' Flytrap and the Bug" – 2:24
  6. "Ai No, Sono" – 2:05

Side two

  1. "Seasons" – 2:53 (Instrumental)
  2. "Power Flower" – 5:31
  3. "Send One Your Love (Music)" – 3:05 (Instrumental)
  4. "Race Babbling" – 8:51

Side three

  1. "Send One Your Love" – 4:02
  2. "Outside My Window" – 5:29
  3. "Black Orchid" – 3:48
  4. "Ecclesiastes" – 3:44 (Instrumental)
  5. "Kesse Ye Lolo De Ye" – 3:00
  6. "Come Back as a Flower" – 3:23 (5:01 on CD and Cassette)

Side four

  1. "A Seed's a Star/Tree Medley" – 5:41
    • Lyrics by Stevie Wonder and Stephanie Andrews.
  2. "The Secret Life of Plants" – 4:28
  3. "Tree" – 5:55 (Instrumental)
  4. "Finale" – 6:47 (Instrumental)

Personnel

Charts

Chart performance for Stevie Wonder's Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants"
Chart (1979)Peak
position
Australian Albums (Kent Music Report) [34] 24
Dutch Albums (Album Top 100) [35] 12
German Albums (Offizielle Top 100) [36] 33
New Zealand Albums (RMNZ) [37] 16
Norwegian Albums (VG-lista) [38] 8
Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan) [39] 13
UK Albums (OCC) [40] 8
US Billboard 200 [41] 4
US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums (Billboard) [42] 4

Certifications

Certifications for Stevie Wonder's Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants"
RegionCertification Certified units/sales
Canada (Music Canada) [43] Gold50,000^
Netherlands (NVPI) [44] Gold50,000^
Spain (PROMUSICAE) [11] Platinum100,000^
United Kingdom (BPI) [45] Gold100,000^

^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stevie Wonder</span> American musician (born 1950)

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