Album: Stevie Wonder Presents: Syreeta
Year: 1974
. . .
Remember way back when I was writing about Stevie Wonder, and I bemoaned the fact that he’s barely released any of the material he recorded during his imperial phase?
Well, here’s kind of a Great Lost Stevie Wonder album from smack dab in the middle of all of that. Syreeta Wright had been working with Stevie Wonder since 1968, including co-writing credit on the ever-awesome “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours),” and after they married in 1970, she co-wrote much of his 1970 album, Where I’m Coming From, including “If You Really Love Me.”
And despite the fact they divorced in 1972, Wonder produced her self-titled debut, and when that failed to break her, made their connection explicit on 1974 very-much-what-it-says-it-is Stevie Wonder Presents Syreeta, of which the highlight is one of Stevie’s catchiest bit of weirdness, the reggae-goes-to-the-carnival “Your Kiss Is Sweet.”
Your kiss is sweet, as sweet as candy
But honey beat your kisses by a million miles
Your kiss is sweet, as sweet as candy
But honey beat your kisses by a million miles
I’m not exactly sure what that means — is “honey” somebody else, or is this sung in the persona of Winnie-The-Pooh? Unlcear. Also, not the point, of course. Dominated by a dizzingly swirling organ style, “Your Kiss is Sweet” also features about 7000 layers of backing vocals harmonizing with Syreeta or singing “ohh-la-ohh-la” and “ooh-na-ooh-na” and “la-la-la-la” over and over again, possibly sung by folks like Minnie Riperton and Deniece Williams, and definitely sung by Stevie Wonder, all of which adds to the level of joy and strangeness that permeates the song from start to finish. Just like any other great Stevie Wonder song.
While “Your Kiss is Sweet” failed to break Syreeta in any major way here in the U.S. — somehow, a really good record with the words “Stevie Wonder” right there in the title only made it to #116 on the album charts — the “Your Kiss is Sweet” did make it to #12 on the U.K. charts, and the whole album is worth seeking out.
“Your Kiss is Sweet”
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