Stevie Wonder Draft Results
A Draft in the Key of Stevie
The voting results are in for the Stevie Wonder edition of the Rock and Roll Fantasy Draft™:
Team A (Steve Leftridge)
Team B (Justin Burch)
Team C (Mark Manary)
Team D (Spencer Marquart)
First of all, this is the first Rock and Roll Fantasy Draft™ of the 2025 season. We draft once a month and award the top-finisher with four points, second place with three points, third place with two points, and fourth place with one point. So after out first month of the new season, we have the following standings:
Steve (4)
Justin (3)
Mark (2)
Spencer (1)
As it happens, the Stevie Wonder finishing order (and therefore the standings so far) are the same order we finished in for the 2024 season. I won five of the six drafts that we did last year—we didn’t start until July—taking the top spot for Aerosmith, Willie Nelson, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, and Bob Dylan (but finishing third for R.E.M.). With the Stevie Wonder win, I keep on reaching the highest ground, victorious now in six of our seven drafts. Not to toot my own Hohner, but I received as many votes this time as all of the other three teams combined. Clap your hands just a little bit louder!
This is just the second time the voting results have corresponded exactly with the draft order. We randomize the draft order each time and then use a snake draft, so Team A picks the first song, followed by Team B, Team C, and Team D. Then the order reverses, so the order in round 2 is D, C, B, A. And so forth for 20 rounds. Only for Willie Nelson did the voting results also end up finishing A→B→C→D.
There has been much discussion among us regarding the ideal draft position. Unlike, say, fantasy football, the Rock Draft™ is more complicated than always wanting the number one draft pick. First of all, by picking first, you have an increased risk of selecting the Kitty in the Middle™, the biggest song in the artist’s catalog and the one people are most sick of and therefore don’t want to vote for. Also, by nature of the snake draft, Team A gets the first overall pick but doesn’t select again until overall pick number eight, an eternity to wait while a lot of the choicest songs get gobbled up.
Incidentally, I have won drafts starting from all four overall draft positions, so I’m not convinced that draft order is among the most critical factors in winning this thing. The first pick on everyone’s list is important—as we’ll see in a bit—but other factors are even more so. Here have been the draft-order positions of the drafts I’ve won:
Aerosmith: 4th
Willie Nelson: 1st
Fleetwood Mac: 3rd
Led Zeppelin: 4th
Bob Dylan: 2nd
Stevie Wonder: 1st
For our breakdown here, I divided Stevie’s career into three eras, organized around his legendary “Classic Period,” commonly established as the five albums from 1972 to 1976. Therefore, I divided the Stevie output as follows:
Pre-Classic Period: Little Stevie-era, 60s Motown, Signed, Sealed & Delivered (‘70), Where I’m Coming From (‘71)
Classic Period: Music of My Mind (‘72), Talking Book (‘72), Innervisions (‘73), Fullingness’ First Finale (‘74), Songs in the Key of Life (‘76)
Post-Classic Period: The Secret Life of Plants (‘79), the 80s, and beyond
Now, other Wonder buffs might prefer to segment Stevie’s career further or, more simply, divide the decades, but isolating the T.O.N.T.O. years plus Key of Life (but not Plants) feels like the truest delineation of Steviedom.
To prepare for the Stevie draft, I read the best biography on him, Signed, Sealed, and Delivered: The Soulful Journey of Stevie Wonder by Mark Ribowski as well as Stevie Wonder: A Musical Guide to the Classic Albums by Steve Lodder and the 3 ⅓ series edition on Songs in the Key of Life, written by my old PopMatters cohort Zeth Lundy.
Heading in, I had two primary goals beyond getting as many of my highest-ranked songs from my wishlist as possible: (1) I wanted to end up with what I thought would be the perfect playlist balance of four Pre-Classic songs, 12 Classic songs, and four Post-Classic songs. (2) I wanted to pick at least one song from each of the 10 studio albums from 1969 to 1980. I was able to achieve both goals, and I’ll cover some of my individual song picks in a sec. But first, let’s look at how each team did in terms of picking from eras.
Justin and I had similar numbers in terms of era distribution although he reached for two more ‘80s songs than I did, a choice I’ll lambast him for in a minute. Mark, a Classic-Period Stevie lover from way back, chose a whopping 15 songs from that era, a full 75% of his list. So in the most on-brand move possible from Mark, he opted for exactly zero songs from the Post-Classic Period. Not only was Mark the only team to take no songs after 1976, he was the only team to take fewer than four songs from that period. (Mark took similar strategies for Aerosmith and Willie Nelson, washing his hands of virtually anything other than their classic ‘70s years.)
And then there’s Spencer. His foibles in this draft will take some time to unpack. But in terms of his eras picks, Spencer drafted the fewest songs by far from the Classic Period. In fact, he was the only one to be in the single digits in the Classic Period and was the only team to pick as many songs from another era as he did from the Classic Period. He carried the most Pre-Classic songs of any team and tied Justin for the most Post-Classic songs. That’s a nightmare distribution.
If you’re wondering which of the Classic Period albums were most thoroughly absorbed during the draft by all the teams, here’s how many tracks were selected from each album. Music of My Mind: 6 of 9; Talking Book: 8 of 10; Innervisions: 8 of 9; Fulfillingness' First Finale: 6 of 10; Songs in the Key of Life: 15 of 17. So percentage-wise, Inneversions and Key of Life were the big winners with 89% and 88% pick rates, respectively. But let’s break the Classic Period down further into pick per album:
I’m not perfectly happy with my own distribution here. Certainly, I would have liked to have had another song or two from both Talking Book and Fulfillingness. I had the most Innervisions songs of anyone and the fewest from Key of Life. But that’s the nature of the draft as songs start to disappear from the board. For example, I had two Key of Life tracks on my overall top 10 wishlist, but, alas, both were grabbed before I could get them.
The interesting numbers are the zeros. Justin didn’t get around to claiming a Music of My Mind track, which calls to mind those six ‘80s tracks he took. But no one laid eggs like Spencer, as he dropped a couple of goose eggs on Talking Book and Innervisions. What did he pick instead? We’ll get to that, but let’s just say he attempted to pay tribute to Stevie by entering the contest as blind as a bat.
After drawing the top overall draft position, I selected an unexpected number-one overall pick that surprised the other players but ended up paying off. With everyone expecting “Superstition” or “Higher Ground,” I went with “Living for the City” instead. My thinking was twofold. (1) I was determined to avoid any potential Kitty in the Middle, and (2) I really wanted “Living for the City,” a classic that looms huge in Stevie fandom. I was willing to cede “Superstition” and “Higher Ground,” which I knew would be the next two picks, and “Sir Duke,” which I didn’t want, to make sure that I got “Living for the City.” As a result, I was able to snag three of the top five songs on my pre-rank wishlist: “Living,” “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” and “You Are the Sunshine of My Life.”
Elsewhere, I wanted “Master Blaster” as a hit single, sure, but primarily because the title sounds like such a funky banger that it would help offset the preponderance of balladry elsewhere on my list. Speaking of which, I was determined to get the best two Stevie ballads of the ‘80s, which I snatched in round 7 (“Overjoyed”) and round 15 (“Ribbon in the Sky”).
Although I didn’t get to a Songs in the Key of Life until round 9—not ideal—I did get my favorite song on the album and a real fan favorite with “Knocks Me Off My Feet. And for the Classic Period tracks, I tried to pick some songs that would be recognizable even outside of a Stevie context, like “Pastime Paradise,” thanks to Coolio, and “They Won’t Go When I Go,” memorably covered by George Michael on Listen Without Prejudice.
And finally, I kept “Until You Come Back to Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do),” one of Aretha Franklin’s greatest recordings, in my pocket until the end, hoping that the other guys overlooked the fact that Stevie co-wrote it. Stevie wrote or co-wrote other classics like Smokey’s “Tears of a Clown” and Rufus’s “Tell Me Something Good,” but without a great recording of Stevie singing them, voters might think they were covers. But for “Until You Come Back,” Stevie recorded his own brilliant version in 1967, and it was included on his 1977 anthology Looking Back. It was a 19th-round steal.
So those are all ways that I dominated. Now let’s look at where everyone else screwed up big time.
Justin. There’s no way to dunk on Justin’s first three songs, a killer opening trio. He also grabbed some choice Classic Period cuts out from under me that I would have liked to have had (“I Believe,” “Contusion,” “Ordinary Pain”). But as we mentioned earlier, Justin arguably took two too many ‘80s songs (and therefore two too few Classic Period songs). What tripped him up further was how early he took those ‘80s tunes. Two of his top five, three of his top seven, and four of his top 11 were ‘80s tracks. No other player leaned as heavily on the Reagan years in the front half of the draft.
Moreover, it’s possible that Justin put too much stock in Rolling Stone’s “The 50 Best Stevie Wonder Songs” published online just this last September. These kinds of lists can certainly be helpful in determining the biggest/greatest songs in an artist’s catalog, but this particular Rolling Stone list, unlike their more useful compendiums, was written not by a committee of writers but by a single critic, Michaelangelo Matos, and it’s a strange list. For example, Matos placed the 1971 funked-up non-single “Do Yourself a Favor” at a befuddling #11 on his list, despite the fact that it’s a relatively unknown non-single that appears on no Stevie Wonder best-of compilations, not even the 4-CD box set. Justin took “Do Yourself a Favor” in the sixth round while the other three teams were still selecting smash-hit singles.
The Rolling Stone list had other songs ranked dubiously high, particularly “Heaven is 10 Zillion Light Years Away” (#15), “All I Do” (#23), “Send One My Love” (#32), and “Love Light in Flight” (#34), all of which ended up on Justin’s list. Now what possessed him to pick “Sunny,” a totally buried For Once in My Life track, a song not on the Rolling Stone list and that Stevie didn’t even write—and chosen in round nine no less—remains a mystery.
Mark. As devoted as he was to the Classic Period, Mark left little room for anything else. For example, with his #2 pick, Mark went with Songs in the Key of Life’s “I Wish” rather than the available and more recognizable “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” from the Pre-Classic Period. His adamant dedication to ‘72-‘76 also means that he invested in several non-singles from Classic Period albums that may have not been familiar to casual voters. He had four non-singles in his first 11 selections, and for picks 14, 15, 19, and 20, Mark continued to pile on album tracks unknown to anyone but the most seasoned fans.
And then there was Mark’s aforementioned prohibition on anything released after 1976. Sure, Stevie Wonder put out some schlock in the ‘80s (we’ll get to Spencer next), but Mark also turned his nose up at “Master Blaster,” “Boogie On Reggae Woman,” “Ain’t Gonna Stand For It,” and other goodies that could have added some Post-Classic flash to his list.
And, of course, there is Mark’s long-standing aversion to any music he considers schmaltzy or sentimental. That cornophobia, coupled with his ‘80s ban, rendered beloved ballads like “Overjoyed” and “Ribbon in the Sky” out of the question. But even Classic Period tracks like “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” and “Isn’t She Lovely”—vote magnets both—were, one imagines, deemed too saccharine for Mark, as he passed on both when they were available in the second round.
Spencer. Oh, heavens, where do we start? Well, let’s first address the Kitty in the Middle. Every artist we’ve covered so far has had a song that is too popular and too overplayed to attract voters. This is the Kitty in the Middle. Would Stevie Wonder have such a Kitty? “Superstition,” Mark’s #1 pick, was a possible candidate, but there’s no indication that it hurt Mark’s team; in fact, at least one voter cited “Superstition” as the reason for voting for Team C. Instead, the Kitty this time was likely the song Spencer picked in the second round: “Sir Duke.” It’s a monster classic, unimpeachably great, but if you’ve been to a high school football game in the last few years, you’ve probably heard it ad nauseum thanks to the marching band. “Sir Duke” is everywhere. Voters are sick of it. They can feel it all over. (By the way, during the last draft, Spencer took Bob Dylan’s Kitty in the Middle, “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Spencer also took “Blowin’ in the Wind” in the Stevie Wonder draft, the first such back-to-back in Rock Draft history.) Still, it should be noted that, given the heinous problems elsewhere in Spencer’s list (see below), it’s impossible to determine whether or not “Sir Duke” as the Kitty was an actual detriment.
Now I have serious news to pass on to everybody. We’ll remind you that for the Dylan draft, Spencer shit the bed by taking “Hurricane” in the first round. So how did Spencer learn his lesson and bounce back in the Stevie draft? By taking—I’m crappin’ you negative—“Love’s in Need of Love Today” as his top pick. Quick—sing the chorus! Can’t? That’s because it’s not among Stevie’s three-dozen most recognizable songs and was never even a single let alone a hit. Spencer’s team was the only one to have a non-single within his first five picks, much less in the top spot. Sure, “Love’s in Need” is the opening song on Songs in the Key of Life, but that means diddly to casual Stevie Wonder fans. On my pre-ranking wishlist, I had the song at #47. Spencer took it numero uno and finished numero lasto.
We’ve already talked about Spencer’s abominable picks distribution among the three periods. He had seven Pre-Classic songs and six Post-Classic songs, which squeezed his Classic picks down to a miniscule seven. And this dearth of Classic Period songs showed up early and late in his list: Four of his first eight songs were from the Pre-Classic Period, and he petered out hard at the end, as among his last seven picks, only one was from the Classic Period; three were very old ‘60s songs from the “Little Stevie” years; three others were from the ‘80s.
But, okay, let’s quit beating around the ebony. We all know what killed Spencer’s chances more than anything else. We’ve discussed the Kitty in the Middle, but what about the Shiny Happy Curse? The SHC is the song so detested by so many that it causes voters to reject any team that contains it. Well, Spencer’s team had not one, not two, but three (and arguably four) Curses on his team. “Ebony and Ivory,” “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” and—egads—“That’s What Friends Are For” (plus perhaps “Part-Time Lover”) were all, indisputably, Shiny Happy turds that spelled doom for Spencer’s team.
None of those songs were going to get drafted at all had Spencer not rescued them from their neon and pastel cultural catacombs. But I for one will say that, even though I dared not draft any of those voter-repellents, I too have a soft spot for those songs, a sentimental fondness for them in all of their fluff and cheese and lovey-dovey mawkishness. So I love that Spencer had the romantic spirit and unadulterated pluck to pick ‘em. Keep smilin’, Spencer. Keep shinin’. And I mean it from the bottom of my heart.
Thanks for reading and for voting! Next up: Our February draft is…THE CLASH! This is a good chance for you all to brush up on The Only Band That Matters in order to get ready for The Only Draft That Matters. See you then.
STEVIE WONDER DRAFT TEAMS
STEVE—TEAM A
Living For the City
Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours)
You Are the Sunshine of My Life
Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing
Master Blaster (Jammin’)
Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday
Overjoyed
If You Really Love Me
Knocks Me Off My Feet
Too High
Pastime Paradise
Visions
Evil
Golden Lady
Ribbon in the Sky
Race Babbling
Summer Soft
I Love Every Little Thing About You
Until You Come Back to Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do)
They Won’t Go When I Go
JUSTIN—TEAM B
Higher Ground
Boogie On Reggae Woman
Isn’t She Lovely?
Do I Do
I Ain’t Gonna Stand for It
Do Yourself a Favor—Where I’m Coming From
That Girl
I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)
Sunny
Ordinary Pain
All I Do
Black Man
Heaven is 10 Zillion Light Years Away
You Met Your Match
Maybe Your Baby
Contusion
Send One Your Love
You’ve Got It Bad Girl
Joy (Takes Over Me)
Love Light in Flight
MARK—TEAM C
Superstition
I Wish
For Once in My Life
Uptight (Everything’s Alright)
You Haven’t Done Nothin’
As
Love Having You Around
Ebony Eyes
We Can Work It Out
Have a Talk With God
Tuesday Heartbreak
Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day
Another Star
Sweet Little Girl
Bird of Beauty
Keep On Running
I Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer
He’s Misstra Know-It-All
Jesus Children of America
Blame It On the Sun
SPENCER—TEAM D
Love’s in Need of Love Today
Sir Duke
My Cherie Amour
I Was Made to Love Her
Happy Birthday
I Just Called to Say I Love You
Blowin’ in the Wind
Someday at Christmas
Joy Inside My Tears
Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You)
Part-Time Lover
Village Ghetto Land
All Day Sucker
That’s What Friends Are For
Ebony and Ivory
Fingertips, Pt. 2
Skeletons
Creepin’
Contract On Love
Hey Love
Look forward to these every month!