On Tuesday, October 13, 2020, Stevie Wonder held a live-streamed press conference and practically broke out of a low profile stance after a 15-year absence from the music scene.
During the conference, Wonder announced the release of two new, politically-charged songs. According to Guardian, those are “Where Is Our Love Song,” with the four-time Grammy winner Gary Clark Jr. on guitar, and “Can’t Put It In the Hands of Fate,” featuring the rappers Busta Rhymes, Rapsody, Cordae, and Chika. He also suggested a new EP featuring the songs, ahead of a “new project” called Through the Eyes of Wonder, with “lots of songs” already written for the latter.
It’s interesting that the songs will be released through So What the Fuss Records, his own label, distributed through Republic Records, marking a possible break from Motown, for whom Wonder was recording since 1962. Speaking from his Southern California home, Wonder said he began writing one of the songs, the fluid “Where Is Our Love Song,” when he was 18 in 1968. He recently unearthed it and completed it with new lyrics.
The second track, “Can’t Put It in the Hands of Fate,” as noted by Rolling Stone, had also been gestating for a few years, he said, but was only completed with new lyrics in recent months. “When I first wrote it, it was about a relationship,” he said, at first playfully, before turning more somber. “And then I was thinking about where we are in the world and I was thinking… this craziness is unacceptable. We’re not going for it anymore. Change is right now. We can’t put it in hands of fate… We can’t put voting in the hands of fate.”
