Maybe your first exposure to the timeless material on Fulfillingness’ First Finale—the fourth of Stevie Wonder’s streak of masterpiece albums—was by way of Luther Vandross’ 1980s cover of “Creepin’.” Maybe you first heard George Michael’s take on “They Won’t Go When I Go” in the ’90s. Or maybe you dropped by Disc-o-Mat or whatever your local record store may have been in the summer of ’74 and bought Stevie’s soul classic when it originally took the world by storm. If so, you might’ve also tuned into the 17th annual Grammy Awards telecast on March 1, 1975, on a boxy TV set to watch Motown’s finest singer-songwriter win his second consecutive Album of the Year award.
So much has been made of Stevie Wonder’s 1972-1976 genius streak that Audible recently devoted an entire podcast series to it: The Wonder of Stevie (presented by Barack and Michelle Obama’s media company, Higher Ground, itself named for Wonder’s 1973 hit single). These classics also include Music From My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life, a rare run of masterworks perhaps only rivaled by consecutive albums of Prince, Michael Jackson, Kanye West and Taylor Swift. Often considered the underrated underdog of the bunch, Fulfillingness’ First Finale might’ve earned that reputation by sounding more thoughtful and restrained than the others.
The album’s first single, “You Haven’t Done Nothin’” (background vocals by The Jackson 5) provided sharp social commentary against then President Richard Nixon, who resigned amid the Watergate scandal days after its release. Though Stevie wouldn’t cross paths with Bob Marley and the Wailers until a 1975 benefit concert in Jamaica, “Boogie On Reggae Woman”—Fulfillingness’ second single—responds to all the reggae in the air during the mid-1970s (despite not being a reggae song itself). In its way, the song presages Wonder’s full-blown tribute to Marley years later: 1980’s “Master Blaster (Jammin’).”
Scoring an Album of the Year win for Innervisions in ’74, Wonder became the first African-American artist to win the Recording Academy’s top award. Fulfillingness’ First Finale put him shoulder to shoulder with Frank Sinatra as artists winning the Grammys’ main prize two years in a row. Come 1976, his double-album opus Songs in the Key of Life made Wonder and Sinatra the only artists of the time to win three consecutive Grammys for best album.
And yes, Taylor Swift eventually bested them all with her fourth Album of the Year win for 2022’s Midnights. Yet Stevie Wonder stands as one of the greatest music icons of all time, a status he cemented during the ’70s with the grand success of Fulfillingness’ First Finale (among other stellar output). Watching Wonder in his gold-framed glasses nod and noodle his way through a performance of “You Haven’t Done Nothin’ ” that night—the entire crowd clapping and carrying on—is to understand why he’s such an American cultural treasure.
