What can’t be undersold about Secret Life of Plants, amid its somewhat forgotten history, is that it was one of the first albums to be digitally recorded, which opened up a new window for Stevie Wonder, always the tinkerer, always seeking the newest and greatest tools to add to his expansive toolbox. 4 on the album charts, in part due to Wonder’s immense hold on the commercial landscape at the time, but only one of its singles made a mark, and reviews were mixed. Motown didn’t promote the record with the same ferocity as Wonder’s previous albums. But needless to say, after one of the greatest runs of albums there has ever been, Secret Life of Plants fell relatively flat. I won’t dwell on 1979’s sprawling Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants here but to say that it is an album that, in quality, nearly matches its overwhelming ambition. And with impossible triumph comes impossible expectations. Baffling to the point of near-impossibility if there weren’t the touchable material to inform a listener that they did not dream it. What Stevie Wonder accomplished between 19 is astonishing. In 1980, Stevie Wonder was, perhaps, feeling a few of those definitions hovering over his career, most notably the definition of heat as a type of immovable pressure. I like the word because I’m from a place where it holds multiple definitions, more than any four letters should. I like the word heat far more than I like the feeling of it. Something to interrupt what otherwise might as well be a long series of hot days that keep getting hotter by the year. It can be unearthed, sometimes, in a scene: a sunset, the taste of a drink, a waning bonfire, and yes, a song. Yet I know that even as you read this, you know that feeling, or something like it, even if our definitions of the feeling aren’t the same. But, like so much nostalgic longing, there’s a feeling that I can’t as easily access. I don’t so much mind the increase in responsibilities, or the earlier alarm, or the more-constant temptation of sleep. Stripped of what I now appreciate as that exhilarating freedom, summer on the other side of adulthood can leave much to be desired. I still got to wake up late, stay out later, fuck around for most of my waking hours, and do it all again. Even in the summers where I worked 20 or 30 hours a week at some fast-food spot or convenience store, I still took the relative freedom of the days for granted. I find that summer-particularly summer vacation-is what’s truly wasted on the young.
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