Living for the City: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 10:01, 14 August 2015
| "Living for the City" | |
|---|---|
| Song | |
| B-side | "Visions" |
"Living for the City" is a 1973 hit single by Stevie Wonder from his Innervisions album. It reached #8 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart and #1 on the R&B chart.[1] Rolling Stone ranked the song #105 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.[2]
Wonder played all the instruments on the song and was assisted by Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff for recording engineering and synthesizer programming.[3] It was one of the first soul music songs to deal explicitly with systemic racism and to use everyday sounds of the street like traffic, voices and sirens which were combined with the music recorded in the studio.[4] The song tells the story of a young African American man, a southern migrant, arriving in New York City.[5] He is tricked into carrying drugs and is arrested, convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison.[6]
Samples
- "Lil Freak" by Usher featuring Nicki Minaj. Tom Breihan of Pitchfork Media described the heavily manipulated sample as, "a monstrous swirl of orchestral exoticism".[7]
Chart performance
| Chart | Peak position |
|---|---|
| U.S. Billboard Hot 100 | 8[8] |
| U.S. Billboard Hot Soul Singles | 1 |
| U.K. Singles Chart | 15[9] |
| German Singles Chart | 20[10] |
References
- ^ Whitburn, Joel (2004). Top R&B/Hip-Hop Singles: 1942-2004. Record Research. p. 635.
- ^ "Stevie Wonder, 'Living for the City'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 7 March 2014.
- ^ Hogan, Ed. "Stevie Wonder - Living For The City". All Music. Retrieved 7 March 2014.
- ^ Williams, Tenley (2002). Stevie Wonder. Philadelphia: Chelsea House publishers. ISBN 9781438122632.
- ^ Sullivan, Steve (2013). Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, Volume 2. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9780810882959.
- ^ Owsinski, Bobby. Bobby Owsinski's Deconstructed Hits: Classic Rock, Vol. 1 - Uncover the Stories & Techniques Behind 20 Iconic Songs. ISBN 9780739093894.
- ^ Breihan, Tom (2010-01-14). "Pitchfork: Track Reviews: Usher - "Little Freak" [ft. Nicki Minaj]". Pitchfork Media. Retrieved 2010-03-07.
{{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in:|publisher=(help) - ^ "Stevie Wonder — Chart history". www.billboard.com. Retrieved 7 March 2014.
- ^ "Stevie Wonder — Official UK charts". www.officialcharts.com. Retrieved 7 March 2014.
- ^ "Stevie Wonder — German charts". www.charts.de. Retrieved 7 March 2014.
External links
| Studio albums | |
|---|---|
| Posthumous studio creations | |
| Live albums | |
| Notable compilations | |
| Billboard Hot 100 top 10 singles | |
| Other Billboard Charts #1 singles | |
| Grammy Awarded Works (not included above) | |
| See also | |