You Are The Sunshine Of My Life was written and recorded by Stevie Wonder in 1972 and was included on his Talking Book album. It was released as a single in 1973 and became a worldwide hit. As a song, it is one of the best-known of the 1970s and widely admired as a composition, perhaps because it combines a sophisticated harmonic arrangement with what is an extremely accessible melody.
Here it is:
The song starts with a really striking use of the whole tone scale, which progresses – as the name implies – in whole tones. You won’t hear this too often in any genre of popular music:
The verse and chorus of the song are characterised by a number of really beautiful transitions. The first occurs at the end of the first line of the chorus:
We’re looking at the Em7 Bbdim Dm7 progression. These chords contain the following notes:
Em7: E G B D
Bb diminished: Bb Db E
Dm7: D F A C
The key to this is the inclusion of the diminished chord between the two minors. This allows two parallel chromatic descents, from B to Bb to A (the most obvious) and from D to Db to C. It sounds great, don’t you think?
A second interesting transition occurs in the second line of the verse:
The Bm E7 Amaj7 sequence brings about a modulation from C major to A major – quite an unusual key change. Although the ii V I progression is a typical way of effecting a key change, coming after C and Dm is really innovative. The problem now is how to get back from the key of A major.
We don’t have to wait long to find out:
Look at the sequence from Am through to D7:
Am: A C E
Ammaj7: A C E G#
Am7: A C E G
D7: D F# A C
The notes in bold show the chromatic descent from A to G# to G to F#. The A and the C notes are common to all four chords, so the transition is really subtle but fantastically effective. In the next line, the D7 moves on to G7 and then to C. This cycle of fourths (A up 4 to D, up 4 to G, up four to C) accomplishes the key change from A major to C major that’s needed to return to the chorus.
Stevie Wonder is not finished with key changes. Towards the end of the song, he decides to lift the whole piece up from C major to C# major:
He does this quite simply but effectively by shifting the dominant chord for C major (G) up to the dominant chord for C# major (G#).
There we have it. Just some examples of how innovative Stevie Wonder was as a songwriter, particularly in this golden period of his career. Although his ideas stretch conventional thinking about songwriting to the limit, none of this gets in the way of a good tune!
