Music of My Mind

Music of My Mind is the fourteenth album released by Stevie Wonder through Motown’s subsidiary label Tamla Records. The recording process for this album began during Memorial Day weekend in May 1971 when Wonder met Malcolm Cecil, who, along with his TONTO bandmate Robert Margouleff, was an associate producer and engineer for the album. Wonder was intrigued by the duo’s use of synthesizers and brought them in to help with the album’s production.

This album was also created while Wonder was a free agent and in order to fund the album’s creation, he used money from a Motown trust that he received after he turned 21 on May 13, 1971. Prior to the release of the album, Wonder negotiated a lucrative contract giving him a higher royalty and full creative control of his music.

The album’s creation took place in New York City’s Mediasound Studios and Electric Lady Studios as well as Crystal Sound in Los Angeles. Wonder would record at all hours of the day and he played all of the album’s instruments with a couple of guest appearances from trombonist Art Baron on “Love Having You Around” and guitarist Buzzy Felton on “Superwoman.” Wonder also wrote all of the songs with contributions from his then-wife Syreeta on “Love Having You Around” and Yvonne Wright on “Girl Blue” and “Evil.”

In a 2018 interview with Okayplayer, Malcolm Cecil explained the meaning behind the album’s title:

Stevie kept on saying, ‘Man, this is how the music sounds in my mind.’ He kept on saying that. When it came to putting an album out, that’s how the album got its title, Music of My Mind. It was not magic, it just tumbled out.

Cecil also talked about the process of putting the album together:

When it came to putting the album together, it was basically, ‘OK. Well, what have we got in the can?’ Let’s play all the songs we got. We went down the list and played song after song, and we came up with the songs that became Music of My Mind. We had probably 50 or 60 songs to pick from. The songs on the album are the ones that we picked. So, it wasn’t made as an album from the beginning. It wasn’t a concept album, where we decided what we were going to do ahead of time and go and laboriously write the songs. It was just Stevie pouring out all these songs out of his head, and we recorded them.

Music of My Mind is considered to be the start of Wonder’s “classic albums” period of the 1970s, which resulted in three Grammy Awards for Album of the Year with 1973’s Innervisions, 1974’s Fulfillingness' First Finale, and 1976’s Songs in the Key of Life. Music of My Mind was a moderate success as it peaked at #21 on the US Billboard 200 and #6 on the R&B chart. The album yielded two singles: the Top 40 single “Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You)” and “Keep On Running.” The album was ranked at #350 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.