Song Lyric of the Day (Stevie Wonder, on ‘Precautionary Measures’ We Still Need)

“We all must take precautionary measures
If love and peace you treasure.”—American Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, “Love's In Need Of Love Today,” from his Songs in the Key of Life LP (1976)
 
A half century ago, Stevie Wonder was such a force to be reckoned with in pop music that, when Paul Simon won the Best Album Grammy for 1975, he thanked the Motown artist for clearing a path for him to win the award by not releasing a record that year.
 
Wonder made up for that absence from the record stores with his much-anticipated, much-delayed double album (plus a single, four-song 33-rpm disc), Songs in the Key of Life, released 50 years ago this week.
 
The LP went to #1 on the charts that first week, and continued the momentum thereafter with five singles: "I Wish," "Sir Duke," "Another Star," "As," and “Isn’t She Lovely?” The following February, Wonder collected four Grammys: Album of the Year, Best Male Pop Performer, Best Male Rhythm and Blues Performer, and Best Producer.
 
Why did this become my favorite collection of Wonder songs? Was it because there was so much in this collection? Because it was his first album that I could buy from my own work earnings? Or because, as a perfectionist, he had produced 21 songs (including several where he handled all the instruments himself!) in a dazzling variety of styles (including the Latin-infused soul and salsa track “Another Star”)?
 
So many of these tunes address love in various forms: with a current mate, a past love, or a newborn daughter (“Isn’t She Lovely?”). But the one with which he started the album, “Love's In Need Of Love Today,” addressed a different kind: what the ancients called agape or caritas—selfless, universal love that makes life possible at all for human beings.
 
Sociopolitical commentary had informed a couple of Wonder songs before: "Living for the City," about a black youth’s struggle for survival in the inner city and the justice system, and, more pointedly, “You Haven't Done Nothin,'" a scathing critique of President Richard Nixon at the height of the Watergate scandal.
 
But “Love's In Need Of Love Today” took a broader view, beyond politicians, of the ills besetting America in the year of its bicentennial. His warning was stark, aimed at the heart of each of his listeners: “The force of evil plans to make you its possession/And it will if we let it destroy everybody.”
 
The passage of 50 years. The divisions in America continue to distress Wonder, as seen two years ago when, on the brink of the 2024 Presidential election, he appealed for civic understanding with “Can We Fix Our Nation's Broken Heart."
 
That race and the resulting daily chaos at home and abroad has only underscored the moral urgency of Wonder’s message from 50 years ago. Too bad more citizens haven’t heeded the plea for “precautionary measures” urged by Wonder and others who covered this song over the years (notably Joan Osborne, on her 2002 CD How Sweet It Is).