Living for the City

"Living for the City" is a 1973 hit single by Stevie Wonder for the Tamla (Motown) label, from his Innervisions album. Reaching #8 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart and #1 on the R&B chart,^[1] the record is driven by a slow bass synth groove (provided by the enormous TONTO modular synthesiser) that manages to exude a certain amount of tension, an appropriate soundscape for the angry social commentary of the song. Rolling Stone ranked the song #104 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

The song

The song begins with Wonder describing the life of a boy born in "hard time Mississippi". His family is poor, but his parents work hard and encourage him, in spite of the dreadful conditions they live in, which include lack of food and money, and racism. As the track progresses, the tension and anger build in Wonder's voice, matching the growing frustrations of the subjects in the song.

A spoken interlude midway through the song has the young boy, now a young man, arriving in New York City for a new beginning. He is tricked into transporting drugs, arrested and sentenced to 10 years in jail. The tension in Wonder's voice boils over at this point into an angry growl, but then subsides again as he ends the song on a positive note. In commercial radio airplay, the spoken dialog is usually edited out, possibly because the word "nigger" is used as he is thrown into a jail cell. Also, the last two verses, following this scenario, are omitted as well.

The spoken interlude can be seen as an electro-acoustic experiment, exploring the composer's main sensory input. Stevie Wonder's growling voice reveals the inner rage that has been building throughout the song. "Living for the City" still holds a substantial edge in social commentary.

In an interview broadcast in 2010 on UK radio station Radio 4, producer Malcolm Cecil revealed how they made the last verse obtain the raspy, angry vocal sound they were after: "We had to get find a way to get the vocal rougher and harder, sound like someone who'd been through some real shit, so we decided the only thing to do was try and get Steve real angry and get his voice hoarse, so when we were recording that vocal for the last verse again we kept on doing stuff that would get him angry and one of the things he hates is stopping the tape, you know if he doesn't say stop the tape in the middle of a vocal then... well, we broke that rule! We kept on stopping the tape, "Come on Steve, you can do better than that, this is shit" and I was really shirty with him, and we got him hoarse, we wouldn't give him tea, he likes this tea with no milk in it, with the lemon to clear the throat, We didn't give him the tea. (Laughs) He was getting real upset; I think he's still upset with me about that, but we got a great track!"

Chart performance

Covers

• Ray Charles recorded the song for his 1975 "Renaissance" album. The song includes all six verses and for the spoken interlude Charles testifies to the extremes of his abject poverty. Wonder was appreciative of Charles' version and the two recorded the song in duet for television.
• In 1982, British heavy metal band Gillan covered this song on their album Magic.
• Danny Bowes and Luke Morley of rock band Thunder (band) covered the song on their second Bowes and Morley project album Mo's Barbeque
• Jazz pianist Ramsey Lewis released an instrumental version of "Living for the City" on his 1974 album Sun Goddess.
• A medley of "Living for the City" and The O'Jays' "For the Love of Money" was recorded by Troop, LeVert, and Queen Latifah. The medley is featured prominently in Mario Van Peebles' 1991 film New Jack City, and appears on the film's soundtrack.
• The song is featured during the memorable Taj Mahal crackhouse scene in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever.
• The song was performed by Jonny Lang as a tribute to Wonder during the 2004 Songwriter's Hall of Fame award ceremony. A different live version appears on Lang's 2003 album Long Time Coming.
• The song was performed by Melissa O'Neil during the top 9 week dedicated to Stevie on Canadian Idol's third season and by Taylor Hicks during the top 12 and finals of the fifth season of American Idol. Siobhan Magnus and Paige Miles both sang this song in the final rounds of Hollywood Week on American Idol before making it to the Top 24.
• The song was covered by The Dirtbombs on their album Ultraglide in Black.
• The song was released as a picture disk single by vocalist Ian Gillan.
• Comedian Richard Pryor referred to this song in Biblical terms on one cut from his album …Is It Something I Said?
• The song was also covered by Ike and Tina Turner and appears on their Nutbush City Limits album (1973).
• Alicia Keys performed it as part of a medley during Live Earth on July 7, 2007.
• Covered by Brooklyn native Noel Pointer, jazz violinist, on his debut album Phantazia, released in 1977.
• More recently by Michael McDonald who had sung it in the past during concerts and featured it on his 2008 album Soul Speak.
• Covered by the band Toto in 2002 on the album Through the Looking Glass.
• The Wu-Tang Clan's "The City", released on Wu-Tang Forever, could be considered a loose cover of the song. The song's hook is the same, lyrically, as the repeated lines in "Living for the City", though Inspectah Deck sings them with a very different and more forlorn melody. Themes in both songs' verses are similar, but the lyrics are not the same.
• In 2010, R&B singer Usher sampled a sped up version of the song for his single, "Lil Freak" featuring Nicki Minaj for his album Raymond v. Raymond.
• Bonnie Tyler covered this song on her album Natural Force.
• Zapp & Roger covered this song as a single.
• Destiny's Child - Living For The City Live At the 2004 Billboard Awards (Tribute To Stevie Wonder) "Destiny's Child - Living For The City Live At the 2004 Billboard Awards (Tribute To Stevie Wonder" on YouTube
• Disco singer Sylvester released a cover of this song which reached #2 on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart in 1986.^[2]

References