On Impacts & Decay & Stevie Wonder
A look at "You & I" and what it means to wear something out
One of the many beautiful things about a vinyl record – a piece of plastic that operates only through vibrations and sound waves and classical physics – is how it relies on the process of decay.
We often associate decay with sad things, but decay is caused by the impacts we’ve made on the world around us. Things touch and rub small pieces of each other away. The more we use something, the more it decays. Just like on a record, where you can tell which track has been played more than all the others.
My vinyl collection started with a box of LPs my dad left sitting in the basement, untouched because of a broken turntable. And, well, my dad’s a bit of a softie. It’s pretty obvious which songs he’d played more than the rest, which grooves in the wax had been worn down more by the diamond stylus – and it’s always the piano ballad.
Case in point: Track 3 “You And I” on Stevie Wonder’s 1972 Talking Book.
One of the world’s best love songs, when I think of someone sitting at a piano and singing to someone they love, I think of “You And I.” It’s one of those tunes that the casual listener would think simple in the best possible sense – a man, a piano, emotions – but a closer listen reveals complex chord movements (check out that EbMaj9 at 0:42 as he resolves the verse with a totally new color on the words “it’s true”), plus all these otherworldly synth parts providing counter melodies throughout.
Synthesizers at this point were brand new. Stevie and the dudes who invented TONTO1 were making this stuff up as they went, throwing together spare parts and finding sounds as he played. Stevie was even so green as to not understand originally that the synth was monophonic and couldn’t play chords (hence all the layered parts and counter melodies). Complexity is what makes a song cool…but it’s the fact that there’s all that complexity and it still feels simple: that’s what makes it special.
It’s no wonder my dad wore it out.
If we’re lucky, decay is long and even and not so noticeable, repeated motions slowly growing slower as they beat over and over again. We develop habits, muscle memory (ever try to tie your shoes in a new way?), and then grow cockeyed as we do certain things on one side more than the other, wearing down joints and bones from all those repeated motions.
We could look at that and say what a shame, how sad it is that we can’t withstand more beatings from father time – or we could look at it the other way: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Slowly but surely, that record is wearing out the diamond stylus too.
All those tiny micrometers of vibrating grooves are cut into something soft-enough to encode the complexly mixed tune, the piano, the voice, the synthesizers, and all the physical reverbs and analog tape delays – and while those grooves inevitably wear away with repeated use, they also give back a little punch along the way. And, if you think about it, the more times that it has its say, the stronger and more obvious it’s going to decay.
I want to make an impact. I want to use what’s been given to me to leave this place better than how I found it. And I guess what I’m learning is that it’s not always about being hard or punching strong – it’s about the long game.
“You And I” wore out my dad’s diamond stylus more than any other song. As a matter of fact, it was the stylus that was broken on our old record player. I guess in the end, that soft piece of vinyl won out after all. Cuz me and Stevie are still out here vibing through the static – but that hard piece of diamond broke off decades ago.
You tell me what made the bigger impact.
TONTO = The Original New Timbral Orchestra, a bizarre frankenstein synthesizer built by a couple of music nerds, Bob Margouleff & Malcolm Cecil that somehow Stevie discovered. After gaining complete creative control from Motown with an unprecedented new record deal (at the tender age of 21), Stevie rattled off a string of records known as his Classic Period – Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness’ First Finale, and the magnum opus, Songs In The Key of Life – that were all recorded with pretty much just him, a clavinet, a drum kit, and TONTO, which was installed in New York’s Electric Ladyland studios. Read the album credits for those records. They’re hilarious. It’s like 3 dudes on horns, a guitarist…and the rest is just Stevie.