Living for the City

Released as a single in November 1973 with Visions on the B-side, it tells of a young man from Mississippi who moves to New York, is tricked into carrying a package for a drug dealer, and is arrested and sentenced to ten years. A stretch in the middle has no music and is built from sound effects and spoken dialogue. The song closes with an appeal to make the world better. Studio sound is mixed with recorded street sounds.

The basic track, electric piano and Wonder's first vocal takes, was recorded on 5 December 1972. Moog bass followed the next day, and drums, harps and Wonder's final vocals on 8 December 1972. The track was then left alone until 20 April 1973, when Wonder recorded backing vocals while slowing down or speeding up the tape to make them sound higher or lower than his natural voice. He played most of the instruments, and Cecil and Margouleff engineered and programmed the synthesizers. Other voices include Calvin Hardaway, Ira Tucker Jr., a New York police officer and the attorney Johanan Vigoda.

It reached number eight on the Hot 100 and number one on the soul chart, and won the 1974 Grammy for Best R&B Song. Ray Charles's recording on his album Renaissance won the Grammy for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance in 1975. Pitchfork's Craig Jenkins connects the song to the killing of 10-year-old Clifford Glover in Queens, at whose funeral Wonder sang. Rolling Stone placed it at number 104 on its 2004 list of the greatest songs. Setlist.fm logs it 252 times.