50-Year-Old Songs: You Haven’t Done Nothin’

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Oh, my aching eyes. Those eye exams with the bright lights and the pupil dilation are getting painful. Oh, well, I’m mostly fine today. Tomorrow the top ten starts, and you’ll get to see what all of these great songs take a back seat to. Let’s close out with some more funk! You Haven’t Done Nothin’ - Stevie Wonder The music of the 70s were amazing for so many reasons. I’ve blabbed endlessly about Elton John’s output, averaging an album every six months, with most of them considered classics. Stevie Wonder wasn’t cranking them out that quickly (although close), but between 1972 and 1976 he put out five albums that are all considered masterpieces. (And, if you consider that Songs in the Key of Life was a double album, he was on par with Elton!). Here’s one you can dance to endlessly. To help things along, Stevie had the Jackson Five singing backup. If you bother to stop dancing long enough to listen to the lyrics, this is a scathing rebuke of then-president Richard Nixon, who had legal troubles out the wazoo. Not only did his vice president (Spiro Agnew) have to resign for tax problems, Tricky Dicky himself was in hot water with the IRS (the day of the tornado “Super Outbreak” of 1974 he announced he was going to pay $465,000 in back taxes…and that’s 1974 money!) in addition to Watergate. So if Wonder seems a little (ha) upset in this song, you can understand. For those of you who weren’t alive in the Nixon era, it wasn’t pleasant. And I was a teenager, but I realized that. Fast forward fifty years and there’s a good hundred politicians who could have this sung to them…including a former president or two. Or, you can just keep dancing to it like we did 50 years ago. You Haven’t Done Nothin’ Written by Stevie Wonder Recorded by Stevie Wonder From Fulfillingness' First Finale, 1974 Tellin’ us how you are changing right from wrong: