Happy Tuesday! Is anyone else shocked by the fact we're almost 25% of the way through 2026? Feels like just yesterday, we were talking about the great meme reset and I was getting AI diss tracks about me. Ahhhhhh those were the days...
Anyway let's talk about the DDD!
WHERE I'M COMING FROM
For the past few weeks, I've given updates on the next DDD on Stevie Wonder. By this point, the principal discography has been listened through, along with a good deal of his collabs with other artists. I'm now fully dedicated to writing the script, which I'm aiming to have done by the end of the week.
If you wanna see my thoughts on any particular Stevie Wonder album or song, go check out the past updates. You might even find hints about how to get my secret treasure...
WRITING PROGRESS
Writing the script continues to go smoothly! I'm now fleshing out , and I've already got a number of sections done. Last time I showed y'all the prologue, and this time let's skip ahead a bit to 1967 and I Was Made To Love Her:
Something I've realized about these script excerpts out of context: the way the script reads can often be super different from the way the video plays out. For example, the end of the fourth paragraph where I write ELECTRIC SITAR - I intend to have some sort of visual gag when I say that. But because, historically, I'm the only one who reads over the script, and I also film and edit the video, I don't feel the need to spell it out. BUT that means, when viewed on its own, it just reads like I'm yelling ELECTRIC SITAR.
Is that funny to anyone else? Maybe it's just funny to me lol
INTERESTING ANECDOTES
Here are some other tidbits I've seen as I flesh out the script:
I've been seeing online (and someone here may have mentioned it?) that Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson are cousins. I looked into it, and yep they're third cousins! Apparently Janet Jackson confirmed it after MJ passed away. What a small world!
When Stevie turned 21, he received all the royalties he earned since his signing. A total of... $1 million. (A little over $8 million today.) Honestly kinda low! Stevie felt the same way, which is why he fought for a 14% royalty rate when he signed a new deal.
Last week, I said Stevie's Up-Tight was super influenced by the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction. Well here's a nice full-circle bit: between Music Of My Mind and Talking Book, Stevie toured with the Rolling Stones as their opener. He even got to test out new material like Superstition.
Everyone knows Songs In The Key of Life as Stevie's big double album. But Fulfillingness' First Finale was actually planned to be a double album. Motown asked Stevie to reign it in, which Stevie agreed to do. Makes me wonder what a double album in the style of FFF would've sounded like - though I suppose some of those extra songs simply made their way onto SITKOL.
FFF was also the last Stevie album the Tonto guys (Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff) worked on. Unfortunately there was a proper fallout over unpaid royalties (and apparently Stevie not thanking Malcolm and Robert during one of his AOTY Grammy speeches). In 1975, Malcolm bought Robert out of TONTO and went on to work with Gil-Scott Heron and the Isley Brothers.
SOME MUSIC TO CHECK OUT
This week's recommendation isn't from Stevie - instead it's the album Zero Time by Tonto's Expanding Head Band. The story goes; Stevie's touring bassist showed him this album in the summer of 1971, it blew Stevie away so much that he met the two guys behind it (Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff), and Stevie proceeded to make four bonafide classic albums with them. Had Stevie not heard this album, his career in the 70s might've taken a far different turn.
A QUESTION
Assuming nothing weird happens, this DDD should be out on YT next Friday. Meaning this'll be the second-to-last update for Stevie Wonder. I'm honestly a little sentimental about that! Doing these has been fun for me, and I hope it's been fun for you as well.
Once the Stevie DDD is out, I'll do a post where we fully debrief about how this experiment's gone, things that we enjoyed, things we'd wanna see in the future, etc.
But I'm curious about something now - the pace of these updates. Right now, I've been doing these once a week. Is that a good pace for you? Let me know through some hi-tech poll technology below.
And that's it for now! Since I'm head-deep on this DDD, I won't have a new video out this week. But we're close to 1/4 through the year, so I think it'd be fun to catch up on what music's been released this year, get everyone's take on the best music of 2026, etc. See you later this week!