Luther vandross number one hits
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In 1970, a 20-year-old Wonder married Syreeta Wright, a singer and former Motown secretary who he’d been dating for a year. Wonder says that he based the song on personal experiences and that he “thought about how many people might get in trouble behind that song!” So it’s almost cute that one of the backup singers on “Part-Time Lover” is Wonder’s ex-wife. The idea seems to be that everyone is running around cheating on each other - that this is the stuff of broad physical comedy, not personal tragedy. There’s a weird innocence to a song like this, one that reminds me of ’70s sex comedies. Wonder never gives the impression that he’s the least bit upset about that. Wonder puts it all together: “A man called our exchange/ But didn’t want to leave his name/ I guess that two can play the game of part-time lovers.” He’s got a part-time lover, but so does she. Toward the end of the song, we get the twist ending: The narrator’s wife is cheating on him, too. The music is a mechanized uptempo bop that doesn’t exactly hint at internal conflicts. There’s tension in Wonder’s voice, but there’s euphoria, too. Instead, he sounds downright giddy about it.
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Wonder doesn’t really sound like he knows it’s so wrong. Instead, all the cloak-and-dagger stuff seems to be part of the appeal of all this “passion on the run”: “We are strangers by day, lovers by night/ Knowing it’s so wrong but feeling so right.” Wonder never really sings about feeling guilty.
#LUTHER VANDROSS NUMBER ONE HITS FULL#
Early on, Wonder’s narrator is in full shady creep mode, communicating with his fling through code - strategic phone hang-ups, lights blinking, using friends as go-betweens. Lyrically, “Part-Time Lover” is all about cheating on someone. Its sound is firmly within the mid-’80s zeitgeist. “Part-Time Lover” doesn’t sound like a boomer veteran playing catchup. He used a LinnDrum machine - one of the first ever sold, according to creator Roger Linn - to put the beat together. The song is almost entirely synth, with Wonder playing the burbly bassline and the warm, bleary hums and the stuttery handclaps and the whistling flute sounds. “Part-Time Lover” features a whole lot of different singers - we’ll get to them - but all the instruments are Wonder. That exploratory spirit probably helped Wonder adapt gracefully to the ’80s, a time when everyone in pop had taken up those techniques. Wonder had been one of the first major artists to really experiment with the idea of using the studio of an instrument, playing around with synths and with multi-tracking. “Part-Time Lover” isn’t a classic record or anything, but it accomplished big things, topping four major Billboard singles charts: The Hot 100, R&B, dance, and adult contemporary. Even then, though, Wonder didn’t owe his continued success to accumulated goodwill. After the insane six-album stretch that started with 1971’s Where I’m Coming From and ended with the 1976 opus Songs In The Key Of Life, Wonder’s output became slower and slighter, and he began to ease into elder-statesman mode. (Small Wonder?) By 1985, it had been nearly a decade since Wonder had wrapped up his ridiculous ’70s streak of creative and commercial dominance. Most of us can probably agree that “Part-Time Lover,” Wonder’s final #1 hit, is minor Wonder.
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In the five years between albums, though, Wonder had still hit #1 twice, with the Paul McCartney duet “ Ebony And Ivory” and the soundtrack cut “ I Just Called To Say I Love You.” Talking to Rolling Stone, Gordy complained, “He could have had two or three albums out in that time.” But then again, if Stevie Wonder was the type to stress too much about what Berry Gordy thought, then he probably wouldn’t have stayed on top for so long in the first place. Wonder had released Hotter Than July, his previous proper album, in 1980. In 1985, when Wonder released his album In Square Circle, Wonder’s Motown boss Berry Gordy publicly groused about how slowly Wonder worked. Wonder could’ve easily scored more #1 hits.