Stevie Wonder's Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants" is an album by Stevie Wonder, originally released on the Tamla Motown label on October 30, 1979. It is the soundtrack to the documentary The Secret Life of Plants, directed by Walon Green, which was based on the book of the same name by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. It contains two singles that reached the Billboard Hot 100 charts: "Send One Your Love" (No. 4) and the minor hit "Outside My Window" (No. 52). The single "Black Orchid" reached No. 63 in the UK.
Production
Wonder created the film score by having Michael Braun, the film's producer, describe each visual image in detail, while the sound engineer, Gary Olazabal, specified the length of a passage. This information was processed to a four-track tape (with the film's sound on one of the tracks), leaving Wonder space to add his own musical accompaniment. Wonder attempted to translate the complex information of the book and film into song lyrics. "Same Old Story," for example, tries to convey the scientific findings of Jagadish Chandra Bose, who developed instruments to measure plants' response to stimuli, and the breakthroughs of American agriculturalist George Washington Carver. While written mostly by Stevie Wonder, some songs were collaborations with Syreeta Wright, Yvonne Wright, and Michael Sembello.
Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants" contained new synthesizer combinations, including the first use of a digital sampling synthesizer, the Computer Music Melodian, used in most tracks of this album. Journey is an early digital recording, released three months after Ry Cooder's Bop till You Drop, generally believed to be the first digitally recorded popular music album, with this album being the second. Stevie Wonder was an early adherent of the technology and used it for all his subsequent recordings. The music was recorded onto U-matic video tapes using a Sony PCM-1600 digital PCM adaptor, and edited with a digital controller also from Sony.
Packaging
Tamla/Motown originally released the album as a double LP in a tri-fold sleeve. The front cover was embossed, and following Wonder's recent trend of printing Braille messages on his albums, the cover illustration was captioned below in Braille for blind readers:
<blockquote>⠄⠁⠃⠧ ⠯ ⠔⠎⠊⠙⠑ ⠮ ⠑⠍⠃⠕⠎⠎⠫ ⠎⠟⠥⠜⠑ ⠊⠎ ⠮ ⠳⠞⠇⠔⠑ ⠷ ⠁ ⠋⠇⠪⠻ ⠾ ⠧⠑⠔⠫ ⠇⠂⠧⠑⠎⠲<br>⠠⠌⠑⠧⠊⠑ ⠠⠺⠕⠝⠙⠻⠄⠎ ⠄⠚⠳⠗⠝⠑⠽ ⠄⠐⠹ ⠠⠮ ⠠⠎⠑⠉⠗⠑⠞ ⠠⠇⠊⠋⠑ ⠷ ⠠⠰⠏⠇⠁⠝⠞⠎⠲<br>
"Above and inside the embossed square is the outline of a flower with veined leaves. Stevie Wonder's Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants."</blockquote>
Initial pressings of the album were scented with a floral perfume, but this was discontinued after it was discovered that the perfume damaged the vinyl.
Release
After Stevie Wonder's previous albums Innervisions (1973), Fulfillingness' First Finale (1974), and Songs in the Key of Life (1976) all won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, his next project was highly anticipated, and Motown marketed it aggressively. Although the Secret Life of Plants documentary film never received a wide release, Wonder's soundtrack album went all the way up to number four in the Rock and R&B Billboard charts in 1979 and was also certified platinum by Productores de Música de España, Reflecting the orchestra's presence and the album's atmospheric tone, the tour venues included concert halls and opera houses. The shows began with the Plants music (partially accompanied by film projections), followed by a second half spanning his career hits.
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"
!width="150"| Date
!width="150"| City
!width="250"| Venue
|-
|November 28, 1979
|Chicago, Illinois
|Auditorium Theatre
|-
|November 29, 1979
|Detroit, Michigan
|Ford Auditorium
|-
|November 30, 1979
|Detroit, Michigan
|Cobo Arena
|-
|December 2, 1979
|New York, New York
|Metropolitan Opera House
|-
|December 3, 1979
|Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
|Academy of Music
|-
|December 4, 1979
|Washington, D.C.
|DAR Constitution Hall
|-
|December 9, 1979
|New York, New York
|Madison Square Garden
|-
|December 18, 1979
|Pasadena, California
|Civic Auditorium
|}
Reception
Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants" has sometimes been considered a "vague" and "overambitious" album; it has been called "goofy", "nerdy", "odd", "pointless" and "foolish", and for listeners and critics it was seen as too much of a departure from his string of melodic albums.
Wonder remarked in 2004 that the album "was an experimental project with me scoring and doing other things I like: challenging myself with all the things that entered my mind from the Venus's Flytrap to Earth's creation to coming back as a flower."
The cover of the album was selected by Rolling Stone in 1991 for their list of 100 Classic Album Covers as a memorable example of album art.
Cash Box said "Outside My Window" was a "truly joyous, pastoral love song, utilizing the universal image of the flower to lyrically represent all that is fair and beautiful in nature." Record World said of it that "A deep, dense bassline is mixed alongside Wonder's uplifting vocals on this mid-tempo track."
Solange Knowles named it as an influence on her 2019 album When I Get Home.
KAINA covered the song "Come Back as a Flower" on her 2022 album It Was a Home.
Track listing
Notes:
- Lead vocals on "Come Back as a Flower" performed by Syreeta Wright.
- "Come Back as a Flower" is 4:59 on some CD editions.
Personnel
- Stevie Wonder – instruments, synthesizer, vocals
- Syreeta Wright – vocals on "Come Back as a Flower"
- Bill Wolfer, Clark Spangler, Gordon Bahary – synthesizer, sequencer, programming
- Ben Bridges, Michael Sembello, Rick Zunigar – guitar
- Nathan Watts, Henry Franklin – bass
- Ron Kersey – Fender Rhodes on "A Seed's a Star/Tree Medley"
- Dennis Davis – electronic drums on "A Seed's a Star/Tree Medley"
- Earl DeRouen – congas, bongos, backing vocals on "A Seed's a Star/Tree Medley"
- Joe Johnson – bells on "A Seed's a Star/Tree Medley"
- Ibrahim Camara – djembe, congas, bells, drums, vocals on "Kesse Ye Lolo De Ye"
- Lamine Konté – kora, vocals on "Kesse Ye Lolo De Ye"
- Josie James – vocals on "Race Babbling"
- Táta Vega – vocals on "A Seed's a Star/Tree Medley"
Charts
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"
|+ Chart performance for Stevie Wonder's Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants"
!Chart (1979)
!Peak<br />position
|-
! scope="row"| Australian Albums (Kent Music Report)
| 24
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Certifications
See also
- Mother Earth's Plantasia, 1976 album by Mort Garson