Bad songs earn bad reputations, but the particular disdain this one attracts is tangled up with people’s love for its creator. Everyone’s entitled a clunker sometimes but it’s galling when one becomes a great artist’s most popular song. At the back of our minds we all know that if Stevie Wonder was to go under a bus tomorrow it wouldn’t be “Living For The City” that racked up the RIP downloads.
Not that Wonder’s ever shown a hint of embarrassment, and why should he? “I Just Called To Say I Love You” hasn’t just made him an awful lot of money, it’s a fine idea for a song. The basic notion – don’t need a special occasion to tell you I love you – is sentimental but no more so than most other love songs: it’s the kind of thing you could imagine making a lovely little doo-wop record, and maybe that simplicity is what Wonder was going for. Then the conceit used to get this across – list all the days this one isn’t – has a charm too: it’s the “don’t know much about history…” structure.
But that’s where things start to go wrong. Once you’ve gone down that route you’re path-dependent – the song can’t vary from its conceit. And anyone listening ‘gets’ the conceit after a single verse, so the song starts to implode after a minute or so. So end it – but pop songs need to be more than a minute long. “I Just Called To Say I Love You” is bad because Stevie Wonder is trapped by his own good idea. You might even detect a desperation in the key changes as he looks for a way to get some life into the song. Too late – and by this time even Wonder’s typically lovely singing is starting to feel like mockery. Yes, he could make a hallmark card sound tender – such a shame he had to.
Score: 3
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“And I mean it from the bottom of my heart” is certainly protest-too-much.
Is Stevie in fact calling to see if she’s still out of town? And the lyrics to this song are the misdirection he coats it with?
When I was learning this for the keyboard aged 7 or so, I was struck by how depressing the lyrics sounded – no holidays, no sweets, no spring, no *music*. How awful! To me Stevie was painting a bleak Mother Hubbard/Tiny Tim/Little Match Girl moral tale of the type designed to remind well-off children how lucky they are. How exactly was a phonecall meant to make a situation like that all better?
Even now I know that sometimes a phonecall *does* make things better, this song still remains miserable.
Even worse than “Upset Stomach” (Last Dragon OST).
I actually don’t mind this. It’s a great melody – I can imagine a jazz player going to town on this like Coltrane and Miles did on a variety of show tunes back in the day. It’s a pleasant sentiment – not as grandiose as ‘Ebony and Ivory’ or one of his next contributions to this project. Stevie’s vocals are good although as has been noted rather melancholy.
It’s a bit repetitive – it might have benefitted from a middle eight or something – and the drum machine contributes to the unvarying quality – had Stevie been playing the drums himself, as on earlier hits, it might well have swung a bit more
The video is absolute pants – even worse than ‘Hello’ which at least has a compelling car crash quality.
It’s not the lyrics that I’ve always disliked about this song (although there’s nothing in the lyrics that redeems it), it’s just that it’s a really dreary song musically. It certainly is repetitive and the chorus is too similar in tempo and melody (at least the first line).
I’m afraid this was probably my first exposure to Stevie (aged 9) – I have no strong memory of Ebony & Ivory, which I marginally prefer – and I’m sure I was bored by it then. My memory of the video is that nothing much happens in that either.
Stevie Wonder might have been impressive in the 1970s, but his mastery of the keyboard and instinct for timeless lyrics are displayed to their best effect here, alongside vocals full of the passion and power we had come to expect from the performer of “Higher Ground”. An undeniable 10.
…is what I might have written if I actually liked this song, which I oh-so-definitely don’t. I could only handle two minutes of re-watching this tedious plinkety-plonk before I had to click across to a studio performance of “Superstition”. No change in the past 25 years, then; I loathed it then and loathe it now. 1.
Can’t help agreeing with Lurker #5. I really don’t mind the lyrics – I’ve never thought of them that much – as you say, standard love song.
I just hate ‘Casio Organ Preset 1’ and the key change. It’s an average song, produced awfully. As I type, I’m trying to envisage in my mind what it would have sounded like had it been done on ‘Innervisions’. Not bad, but hardly a stand-out. 2.
Male, syrupy: I just called to say I love you.
Female, sharply and suspiciously: What have you done?
Yes, tragically bad. It’s the lack of melodic and rhythmic invention that’s killing. Pretend it never happened (like, e.g., the two Matrix sequels). This track from Innervisions, which the Sex And The City theme strip-mined, is a good palate-cleanser:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkBUx6Zn6mo
This is the exact point that pop music ceased to be great in the 80s. Stevie’s genius ended with Hotter Than July and his decline couldn’t have been steeper. There are no redeeming features to this song. A score of three is ridiculously generous.
Male, syrupy: I just called to say I love you.
Female, sharply and suspiciously: What have you done?
Male, desolate: My genius came to a steep end
Female: *puts phone down*
WHO IS THE VILLAIN HERE EH?
“This is the exact point that pop music ceased to be great in the 80s”
Does not compute.
The ‘no this no that’ of the verses really bugged me at the time and sure a song this melancholic and sentimental wasn’t going to hold much interest for a 6 year old. I’m trying to think of the first non-dancing song I did like on that basis – is tough!
Liked a couple of his singles after this tho (altho of them ‘Go Home’ is probably the best and I didn’t hear that until recent years – shame it didn’t make top 40).
Looks like for once we might get a total consensus on this one – musical genius gets his biggest hit with his most rubbish song – and I’m not going to disagree with that.
But guess what? It’s the biggest selling American single in the UK, EVER! At least in the period 1952-2002, which excludes “White Christmas” and covers the first 50 years of the UK singles chart – it’s the 13th biggest selling single of all time in the UK.
Or rather, it’s the best seller by a wholly American act – the only Yanks featured on singles which outsold this are John Travolta on “YTOTIW” and, er, Jody Watley and Kool and the Gang coming up shortly.
Such a massive seller, indeed, that the record it kept at number 2 was also in that Channel 4 top 100 list – “Ghostbusters” reaching number 92.
It’s also, I recently realised, another example of a phenomenon I haven’t heard in a long while – the English-language hit covered in French. A while back I mentioned that Sylvie Vartan’s “Danse Ta Vie” (“Flashdance”) was the last one I could think of, but I’ve just remembered that this one was translated to “Je t’appelle pour dire que je t’aime” as performed by – wait for it – Sacha Distel…
for consensus sake, this is terrible. i don’t dislike the melody and i agree with the person above who said that perhaps a different arrangement might be more bearable. as it is, the sound and mood are extremely sterile and the omnipresence of that monotonous keyboard make me feel claustrophobic. a three is about right.
wait, was no one else told at junior school that this was YET ANOTHER SONG ABOUT OUR FORTHCOMING NUCLEAR DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM?
just me then?
My favourite ever Smash Hits letter, by the way, was one which attempted to work out, logic problem style, exactly which day Stevie must be calling her on.
ie:
No new yearss day To celebrate (because of NUCLEAR DOOM)
No chocolate covered candy hearts to give away
No first of spring (because of NUCLEAR DOOM)
No song to sing
In fact heres just another ordinary day (about to be spoiled by NUCLEAR DOOM which can come AT ANY TIME)
No april rain (because of NUCLEAR DOOM)
No flowers bloom (because of NUCLEAR DOOM)
No wedding saturday within the month of june (YOU GET THE IDEA)
I’ll say right away that this is a Stevie Wonder a long way from his best. Stevie Wonder at his best was a thing of wonder, after all, as is the fact that until this point he never had a solo number one (and the one he shared was sui generis). So my feelings about this are coloured by my delight that at last he’d got one, even if it was as a kind of lifetime achievement award. He’s not the first act by any means to be remembered in Popular by something well short of his best.
And having said that, I actually rather like it. So there! I like its jauntiness. I like its “I’m in love and nothing else matters” air. I’ve sung it down the phone more than once. Maybe I deserve to be locked up for that, but you had to be there, in those particular circumstances. Maybe to this old fogey (I’m thirty now, did I mention that or shall I go back to Two Tribes to tell that tale?) an old-fashioned soppy love song felt like a breath of fresh air in a culture that seemed increasing just to want to take its clothes off and get ion with it. If this hadn’t been Stevie, would the brickbats be flying as thick and fast?
And this point I should say to those young turks who are no doubt thoroughly fed up of the deeply uncool old bat linking her life to the pop charts that my time with Popular is nearly up so just humour me for a little bit longer! Because I’m living a double life now. I catch the train to St Neots on a Monday morning (change at Hitchin, warming mug of steaming tea from the urn between trains) and return to London on Friday evening, taking the Victoria Line to Oxford Circus and wandering through the maze of tunnels to the Central Line, all the time feeling like it was all a dream (here I am living in LONDON!). Those tunnels along with my general end-of-week tiredness just added to the dreamlike quality, and they were covered in posters for a Gene Wilder film called “The Woman in Red”. Which featured this song. (The film, not the poster). Actually I probably couldn’t have cared less about the film were it not for the film reviewer in terribly comme il faut listings rag City Limits who declared that all women would be offended by this film. Now there’s a red rag to an old cow!
Well, here I am, going against the tide yet again. 6.
Rosie I dunno about anyone else but I’m quite upset at yr imminent departure from the comments boxes. I hope you’ll at least keep an eye on us and pop in sometimes, even if it’s only to groan at the young folk.
oo wonder who that reviewer was? i probably know them! (it’s not me)
Not much more to add as everyone’s detailed the song’s primary sins–its drab lyrics, its melodic sameness and its seemingly endless length (when Stevie’s singing about July and harvest moons about 3:30 in, the stomach sinks because you realize “oh god, he’s still got Halloween and Christmas to get through”). I will stand up for “Part Time Lover” though, which I think is Stevie’s last good pop hit.
And plus what Tom said: plz to visit at least!
Well, I have plans for my retirement but they won’t involve having been terribly engaged with the charts. All will become clear in time.
However, one could still wish for any number of other Stevie hits to have been the LAA. I particularly resented Master Blaster being kept out by the bloody Jam!
i always put this in the same category as ‘seven tears’ and ‘save your love’.
it said nothing to me about my (9 year old) life.
I’ll third that, Tom and Sukrat. Rosie, everyone comes to a point where the pop charts are no longer quite as enjoyable or important as they were, but it doesn’t mean the whole thing becomes worthless at that point. Your posts are an essential part of the Popular experience, so don’t cut the ties entirely and give us some Barrovian straight talk now and again.
There’s something about the specific synth sound on this record. It’s very close to the one the Tweets used for The Birdie Song four years earlier, and which meant that weirdly this record actually felt a bit nostalgic to me at the time, even though I was only 9. It reminded me of another record which was HALF A LIFETIME away, back in the past.
Course, that only makes it even more unforgivable, in retrospect – not only is he using synth presets, they’re not even contemporary ones.
Relistening, I was leaning towards a fairly generous 3. And I made it to the end, only to be disgusted by that CHA-CHA-CHA ending, which I’d totally forgotten about. So, 1 from me.
The Oscar winning Woman In Red is a stinker. Remarkably misogynistic example of middle aged lothario (middle aged, GENE WILDER WAS MIDDLE AGED IN THE PRODUCERS) lusting after red clad wank fantasy (Kelly Le Brock). I remember mild slapstick and not much else. Apparently a remake of an equally offensive French Film with the much better title An Elephant Can Be Extremely Deceptive. Oscar winning film, of course, because Stevie won Best Original Song Oscar for this too.
Poor of Kelly Le Brock. She had two modes in her movie career. Wank Fantasy: this and Weird Science, and then Mrs Steven Seagal (Hard To Kill). Perhaps her career was curtailed due to her excess flatulence:
Doh, I should have got here earlier – my withering “presets” put-down has already been done, twice! And has there ever been a worse ending to any song than that perfunctory CHA-CHA-CHA? (To say nothing of that maddening bass line, which sounds like another machine-installed preset.) So, yes, I agree with others that this is an efficient – if corny – melody, clobbered by a deadening arrangement. It’s almost as if the whole tenor of the record is to bludgeon the listener with a particular aesthetic, over and over again, e.g. those hymn-like resolutions at the end of each chorus, which always get my back up. As such, it reminds me of awkward slow dances at family occasions, and of bored cabaret bands with bills to pay.
Come to think of it, that’s the main problem: that this already sounds like it’s being played for the thousandth time, by a bored cabaret covers band.
If Stevie had produced and written this aged 8, I’d have been disappointed with him.
My Mum likes it though – I assume a lot of mums liked it, because I don’t know anyone else who likes the damn thing.
Check list of horror:
1. The gloopy, overly sincere lyric (“and I mean it from the bottom of my heart” is pure Hughie Green)
2. The excessively home demo (what the hell is that detuned, dying sigh noise on every chorus?) production
3. The giveaway clunky key change (can any no.1 claim one clunkier?)
4. “CHA CHA CHA!”
For all these reasons, backed up by Erithian’s frightening sales figures, I’ve always been waiting for Stevie to come clean and admit that – with his monstrous talents – he had tried to write The Black Hit Of Space. And pretty much done it.
I remember at the time Stevie said he had been working on this song for years, returning to it often, refining it, and by 1984 he had it perfected.
The 12″ came out during it’s run at the top. Our Price, Epsom, was shifting loads of The Woman In Red soundtrack until it was released, to people who were presumably 7″ phobic. Anyway, the long awaited 12 turned up. We stuck it on and heard the 7″ version, followed by the song repeated in its entirety – with Stevie singing through a vocoder.
It’s a pisstake, right? Dada, maybe? Stone of shame, Stevie! 1.
Stevie always had his mawkish tendencies but by the time of this one he seemed to have shot his talent bolt (post-Hotter Than July as was said above) and it has none of the genius for melody that made the likes of ‘You Are The Sunshine of Life’ so easy on the ear. Even though that one is just as soppy this sounds like a cheap birthday card in comparison.
I saw him live at Earl’s Court just before this came out and he played a tune which he said was from the soundtrack of a new movie. Can’t remember if it was this song though. His Jekyll and Hyde tendencies were on full display at that gig too. One minute the band were playing the hottest, funkiest version of ‘Superstition’ you’ve ever heard, the next Stevie was getting the ladies in the audience to singalong to ‘All I Do’ as if he was some naff cabaret act.
“Rosie, oh Rosie,
It’s raining when you look the other way”
I also hope you reconsider and join in whenever you have an opinion or a memory to add (not remembering the song that well won’t stop me from commenting on entries in the 90s and 00s). We’d miss your unique take, and your “going against the tide”.
There also was a horrific episode of “The Cosby Show” in which Stevie got the whole family to sing along to this song–the low point being Stevie coaching Claire Huxtable to sing the opening verse, line by line. Torture.
Aw Rosie, don’t you do that to the boys!
You come on so willing
You come on so strong
It will be so chillin’
When you act so willin’
And your warmth sets like the sun…
wichita @ 33: Don’t you dare paint my face up in the sky!
I remarked a few days ago that this login had magical powers. I have plans for using them. Just be patient!
#34 – “jammin’ on the 1!”
just thought of something else in reference to mike’s rememberences of “awkward family slow dances”: this song is very hard to dance to. it’s neither slow enough to be a slow dance, nor fast enough to be fun to dance to. it just plods along somewhere in between, with no groove and no dynamics. someone should’ve done a “two tribes”-style remix of this track with superautomated bass+drum figures and samples of reagan speeches, ie
no chocolate covered candy hearts to give away/”we begin bombing in five minutes”
(the possibilities are endless, much like this song)
When I saw him for the first time last year, he kept this to a less than a minute snippet, which is, as Tom suggests, probably the ideal length. I just checked to see if I owned this and discovered that the last Stevie 7″ I bought was 1982’s undistinguished (but OK), ‘Frontline’.
A pop music equivalent of petrol station flowers, and why does it sound so cheap? The backing track is sheer working mens club tack. It even has one of those BA-Ba-ba ” flourishes ” on the end.
Stevie wonder did write worse songs you know. (it’s taken as a given that he wrote some excelent songs too).
Try listening to “lately” and then say how bad “I just called” sounds.
I’d give this a generous 2, for at least having the consistency to set the greetings card lyrics to some truly rotten music. To the nine year old me, this song seemed to go on forever and stay at the top forever. It won the Oscar for best song, the committee must have had tin ears to give the award to this ahead of the surely more deserving aforementioned Ghostbusters, anything from Purple Rain (although I think that got the best soundtrack album award), Let’s Hear It For The Boy (a big fave of mine at the time), or even the main theme from Footloose. Either that or they thought ‘Stevie’s officially a legend, we’d best give him the Oscar’.
Listing the above reminded me what a truly blockbuster pop year this was. All the above movie songs were American No1s.
In commercial terms if not artistic ones, were the early 80s Motown’s most successful period in the UK charts?
I would make comparisons to Chuck Berry’s No1, but I don’t want to be accused of spoilers!
I don’t have any numbers for it but Motown was HUGE in the 1960s in the UK so I can’t imagine a handful of chart toppers in the 80s would beat that.
Would saying that he’s phoning this in be a really bad pun?
Lee, bad puns at this song’s expense fall under the heading of Restitution in my book. That would be the Yellow Pages… let your fingertips do the walking.
You know what, I actually rather like this. The construct of the year running through the length of the song is quite a neat one and the blankness and doom of the rituals and consolations of the seasons being confiscated or banned stops it from becoming too syrupy. And I really like the blip-blip, blip-blip-blip-blip pattern that’s hidden quietly in the mix.
Until the last 90 seconds, when the thing has run its natural course, but still limps onwards with some very routine emoting and unwanted climaxes.
I’m sure that somewhere I’ve read that this was written for Nelson Mandela, or perhaps Stevie just dedicated it to him on Mandela day. It certainly works better as a song to an incarcerated man than as a rather overworked communique to a loved woman, anyway.
I didn’t like it at the time of my twelfth birthday, though, and amused myself by imagining the recipient of the call telling the singer to shut up. Perhaps unexpectedly, this was generally popular among my peers though, maybe because of some residual Wonder kudos.
Popular is now entering one of the worst periods of my life as I start five years at a top London public school. I’m a awkward, inward and rather priggish boy, bullied to tears most days, and the bottom pupil of the bottom class for much of the time. So far too many of these songs have bad personal overtones to them. But I’ll try not to be too swayed by that.
#2 Watch. Two rather significant songs.
A massive three weeks for Ray Parker Jr’s Ghostbusters, absolutely loved by me at the time, and an incredibly potent call and response song for those of an age to remember it. A genuinely funny film, too. I got a luminous Ghostbusters T-shirt for Christmas in 1984. How cool was I?
Then just a week for Culture Club’s The War Song, a record for which nobody has a good word, certainly not Boy George. It may possibly not be good, but I always listen to it with pleasure. If you’re going to be naieve, you can’t go at it half-cocked.
Parody watch: Ronnie Corbett, in blackface, on the two Ronnies in 1985! Part of a musical routine in which they also impersonated Status Quo.
#44 re “the blankness and doom of the rituals and consolations of the seasons being confiscated or banned”: I always thought it was the implied second line of this phone call to Grandma Wonder:
“Oh, hello dear, how lovely to hear your voice. What’s the special occasion?”
“No particular reason, Grandma – no New Year’s Day, no Valentine’s Day, no first of spring: I just called to say…”
John Lennon’s “God” it ain’t.
“It works better as a song to an incarcerated man”
Aren’t there UN conventions on this kind of thing?
#29 nails it, I think.
Re:40 I really like Lately, as it happens.
Re 40: Maybe not his finest moment but “Lately I’ve been staring in the mirror, very slowly picking me apart” trumps every ounce of IJCTSILY. “Very slowly.” Gosh.
Ray Parker Jr, held at bay with Ghostbusters, had previously played guitar on Talking Book.
Which reminds me that, shockingly, I have no Stevie Wonder lps apart from Uptight (featuring the fabulous, cynically ‘swinging’ Love A Go Go)*. So, if anyone had to point me to THE Stevie Wonder lp, which one would it be? I’m guessing it won’t be The Woman In Red OST.
*did have Talking Book on cassette as a kid, but long gone.