Happy 40th Anniversary to Stevie Wonder’s twentieth studio album In Square Circle, originally released September 13, 1985.
Think quickly. As AI descends upon us in 2025, how many different industries are scrambling to integrate it or face obsolescence? Technology has always had this effect, particularly on music. By 2000, Napster hastened the onset of digital sales and eventual streaming. In 1995, the internet made everyone change their game plan. And back in 1985, a similarly thrilling-unnerving environment fostered Stevie Wonder’s tech-heavy In Square Circle.
This misunderstood pop-soul touchstone strikes an impossible balance of experimentation, spirituality, and commercial sensibility. The latter hinged on the morally dubious, but undeniably catchy “Part-Time Lover.” With Syreeta Wright and Earth, Wind & Fire’s Philip Bailey among the backing vocalists while Luther Vandross casually fired off masterful staccato triplet ad-libs—do you realize how hard those are to sing?!—this was an all-star affair. Speaking of affairs, this seems like a how-to on hiding a paramour (“Call up, ring once, hang up the phone / To let me know you made it home”) until we learn the cheater was also getting cheated on.
“I remember when I was breaking up with this girl and I was, like, seeing this other girl,” Wonder explained to interviewer David Nathan. “I came home and some guy called up and disguised his voice, tried to sound like one of her girlfriends to see if she was around.” And that’s how Wonder learned that “two can play the game.” Undoubtedly, hearts got broken and feelings were hurt, but it resulted in a platinum #1 single on Billboard’s Pop, Soul, Dance, and Adult Contemporary charts, and a GRAMMY for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. So perhaps the infidelity and cuckoldry were…worth it?
Outside of that pinnacle, other standouts often go curiously unnoticed. The second single “Go Home” turns a foolhardy love decision into a funk-pop cautionary tale (“She only wanted to be close to me / To give me the love she knew someday I’d need / But I kept saying, ‘Girl, you’re wrong / Go home’”). This personal favorite also fared well, reaching R&B #2, Pop #10, and AC #1 on the Billboard charts.
Where Wonder’s heart-on-sleeve balladry can occasionally border on cloying, typically he nails it, which makes his gorgeous third single “Overjoyed” business as usual. Keeping time with quantized bird chirps, wave crashes, and other ecological accoutrement, this inspirational climber could have captured hearts and ears in any decade of Wonder’s career. Its equally beautiful albeit overshadowed song sibling is the introspective “Whereabouts,” which grapples with an existential crisis after heartbreak. Wonder’s ability to access this childlike vulnerability has always been both an artistic and spiritual strength.
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A more philosophical mind might examine In Square Circle and the timing of its rollout and surmise that this beautiful body of work was brought into the world just when our collective consciousness needed Wonder’s idealized, romantic musings most. Motown Records, however, would just call it late.
Following the splash of Hotter Than July (1980), Wonder signed another seven-year deal and a cash-strapped Motown hoped he would prove profitable sooner than later. The record was likely meant to release around the time he performed “Go Home” and “Overjoyed” on Saturday Night Live, May 7, 1983. Still, the same delays that plagued Songs in the Key of Life (1976) recurred. He seemed creatively stuck, but a fortuitous redirection came his way. And her name was Dionne Warwick.
Warwick invited him to pen a tune for the film The Woman in Red (1984). One song turned into three. Soon, Wonder would helm the whole soundtrack. That wasn’t what Motown wanted, but product is product. And this one yielded the biggest Stevie single to date: the Oscar-winning “I Just Called to Say I Love You.”
During this time, musician-backed funk went missing, last seen alive on Original Musiquarium I (1982). Wonder’s SNL preview hints that these songs were fully formed early on, but notably more organic. So what happened?
The rise of MIDI synthesizers and drum machines happened. Never has Wonder feared using technological advances—early adoption of Moog synths was key to developing his signature sound. The hazard was overuse. On all but the last three cuts of In Square Circle, the bass, guitar, strings, and horns he once arranged into transcendent masterpieces were swapped for MIDI substitutes. Even the recording process had gone from analog to digital. As with AI now, injecting tech everywhere then was novel in the short term, but ultimately an attenuating distraction. The Woman in Red was overtaken by this phenomenon first, but after “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” Wonder became the 600-pound gorilla. Who wouldn’t bet on a muse that lucrative? If nothing else, In Square Circle was guaranteed to pay off musically.
With a wealth of sounds at Wonder’s fingertips, he forged accessible R&B from his jazz and pop understanding with unprecedented ease. For instance, “Stranger on the Shore of Love” flirts with saccharine pop, but avoids its pitfalls. Instead, awash in key-triggered vox humana samples, it boasts a dazzling, singable melody—not easy given the sparkling shift of chords in its chorus. “Never in Your Sun” blasts off with an intricate, electro-hop loop (word to “Planet Rock”) that even the most skilled drummer couldn’t pull off naturally. He layers it with a heart-eyed short story of encountering a mystery woman, possibly an angel-in-disguise. Wonder’s elastic upper range enlivens that tune as it does the criminally underappreciated “I Love You Too Much.” While I knew nothing of this cut before Erykah Badu interpolated it into Baduizm’s “No Love” in 1997, Wonder’s original is magnificent. This moody midtempo anchored by a serrated bassline sounds like the otherworldly dusk of In Square Circle’s cover art.
Along with its hidden gems, In Square Circle also carried its share of outliers and oddities. Final US single “Land of La La” plumbs an MTV-ready new wave rock sound á la Michael Sembello’s “Maniac,” but uses it for the thematic inverse to Gladys Knight’s “Midnight Train to Georgia.” Without heed to its chart anemia, Wonder stood by the composition, performing it live on multiple occasions even in the recent decade. Despite that curveball, “Spiritual Walkers” is to be expected from Wonder who sung of transcendental meditation on “Jesus Children of America” and incorporated Hare Krishna chants into “Pasttime Paradise.” The result is less satisfying even on familiar territory of swish-clapped funk. In one assessment, SPIN Magazine dismissed him as a mystagogue. Ouch.
Sonically, “Part-Time Lover” updates The Supremes’ skippity-swung “You Can’t Hurry Love” and “My World is Empty Without You” circa 1965, yet some took it as an imitation of Hall and Oates’ “Maneater.” Critics didn’t quite get all that Wonder folded into In Square Circle… literally. The gatefold vinyl contained an eight-page color booklet with lyrics, credits, and a lengthy, esoteric narrative explaining how the album title represents an “unending spiral.” Applaud the swing, but meaning was largely missed.
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Flaws notwithstanding, this record led to a high-profile cameo on The Cosby Show in February 1986 that was nothing short of iconic. After asking Malcolm Jamal-Warner what he might say at a party (“jammin’ on the one!”), Wonder records and plays that voice back as a keyboard instrument. All at once, the next several generations of hip-hop producers’ imaginations were set alight. Questlove says it was the first time J Dilla and Just Blaze had seen a sampler, a piece of equipment that would change their lives, the course of hip-hop, and by extension, history forever.
If there’s one thing Stevie Wonder loves, it’s changing history. Like his “Happy Birthday” spurred the USA to declare Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a federal holiday, or 1984’s “Don’t Drive Drunk” galvanized awareness of the titular danger, Wonder closes In Square Circle with “It’s Wrong (Apartheid).” Its message is appropriately unsubtle (“Apartheid’s wrong / Like slavery was wrong / Like the holocaust was wrong”) and joyous in its reproach with call-and-response in English and Xhosa.
Even with mixed reviews, In Square Circle sold double platinum, reached #5 on the US Billboard 200 and UK Pop album charts. As for the Billboard US R&B Albums, it remained at #1 for three months straight. Once music acculturated to electronic instruments, it allowed a refocus on craft. Wonder’s next release Characters (1987) redeemed him critically and found him much more in control of the album format.
Gambles like In Square Circle were part of the collective ‘80s trial-and-error that smoothed the road for efficient implementation in the ‘90s and on. It’s often framed as a faltering in Wonder’s output rather than proof he could still make hits while on less-sure footing. Stevie Wonder took one for the team. A lesser artist would play it safe for fear of losing their audience. But Wonder trusted his talent and most of all, his sight. Even under pressure, he could bet it all on black. And didn’t he win big?
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