Album dossier / 1985

In Square Circle

Stevie Wonder · R&B/Soul

Self-produced at his own Wonderland Studio in Los Angeles across 1984-85, Stevie Wonder's twentieth studio album followed his soundtrack hit 'I Just Called to Say I Love You' from The Woman in Red and spent 12 weeks at #1 on the Billboard R&B Albums chart while also reaching the pop top five; lead single 'Part-Time Lover' became his fifth (and, to date, final) Billboard Hot 100 #1, while ballad 'Overjoyed' had originated years earlier as a song Wonder wrote for an aborted mid-1970s project before he finally recorded it here. The album also carried a direct political statement: 'It's Wrong (Apartheid)' led South Africa's government to ban his music outright after Wonder dedicated his 1985 Best Song Oscar (for 'I Just Called to Say I Love You') to imprisoned anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela, and the UN's Special Committee Against Apartheid honored him that same year on his 35th birthday. 'Overjoyed' layers real environmental percussion into the arrangement -- crickets, ocean waves, dropped stones and crushed leaves -- rather than pure synthesis, a texture detail overlooked in most retrospectives.