You are the Sunshine of Our Lives: Stevie Wonder Birthday Video Roundup

Video Roundup
05/13/2016
KEXP
photo by Eddie Wolfl

Today, KEXP celebrates the birthday of Stevland Hardaway Morris, better known to the world as Stevie Wonder. Wonder turns 66 years old today, and it's impressive to think he's been a musician and songwriter for 55 of those years, recording more than 30 U.S. top ten hits and racking up 25 Grammy Awards, the most ever for a male solo artist. In 1984, he became the first Motown artist and second African-American musician to win an Academy Award for "Best Original Song" for the single "I Just Called to Say I Love You," used in the film The Woman in Red.

Not only that, but throughout his career, Wonder has used his popularity as a platform to advocate for political causes: he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Civil Rights Museum, being named one of the United Nations Messengers of Peace, and in 2014, President Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Needless to say, Wonder is, well, pretty wonderful. KEXP celebrates his legacy from 6AM to 6PM with a live broadcast from the KEXP New Home, packed with guest DJs and musical guests (see the complete line-up here). And here on the KEXP Blog, we've put together a look at his impressive career, from a 1963 performance at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem at the age of 12, to busking on Sesame Street in a charming 1973 episode, to his recent Carpool Karaoke ride on The Late Late Show with James Corden, which shows his playful, jokester side. Though the song posted below was written in 1981 for Martin Luther King, Jr., on this day, we can't help but feel it "couldn't fit more perfectly" to have KEXP's Soul Day "on the day you came to be."

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