Where I'm Coming From

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Where I'm Coming From

Studio album by Stevie Wonder
Released	April 12, 1971
Recorded	1971
Genre	Soul
Length	34:46
Label	Tamla
Producer(s)	Stevie Wonder
All Music Guide link
Stevie Wonder chronology
Signed, Sealed, and Delivered (1970)	Where I'm Coming From (1971)	Music of My Mind (1972)

Where I'm Coming From is a 1971 album by Stevie Wonder. This album is considered a groundbreaking record for Wonder, in that it is the first album in which he had complete artistic freedom in its production. It was the last album produced under his first contract with Motown Records.

[edit] History

Motown's founder Berry Gordy had maintained tight control over his company's productions, and as the artists' careers progressed, they began to feel the need for the allowance of social consciousness and artistic freedom in their recordings. Stevie Wonder was one of the Motown artists, along with Marvin Gaye, who wanted to expand with new styles and musical techniques, some of which became more apparent in the earlier album For Once In My Life.

Although Wonder had begun producing his own recordings, Motown still retained control over the content of his albums. Tensions increased as Wonder approached his twenty-first birthday; his contract had a clause which allowed Wonder to void it upon becoming a legal adult. When the president of Motown approached Wonder about renegotiating his contract, Wonder refused and asked for his contract to be voided.

Anticipating this event, Wonder took advantage of the fact that Motown would be forced to accept whatever he gave to them, and was able to produce Where I'm Coming From without any outside interference from the company. In particular, the song "I Wanna Talk To You", which portrayed a racially-charged dialog between a black man and an old southern white man (Wonder portrayed both characters) is also a subvert reference to his breakaway from Gordy and Motown (particularly apparent in the ad-libbed line "I'm gonna take my share...!")

Where I'm Coming From, which departed drastically from the Motown Sound employed in previous Stevie Wonder albums, yielded the U.S. number-eight hit single, "If You Really Love Me". The soft ballad "I Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer" (a predecessor to the Wonder's later recording "You and I") was also successful. Much of the rest of the album was social commentary and war-themed songs.

The album foreshadowed Wonder's next four albums in its production techniques, such as use of the Hohner clavinet. The most notable difference on Where I'm Coming From from subsequent Wonder albums was the lack of synthesizers, which Wonder first began using with his next album, Music of My Mind. Like Wonder's earlier albums, several tracks on Where I'm Coming From use the company's studio musicians, The Funk Brothers, and also make use of string orchestras.