Soul song week: 5. I Was Made to Love Her

May 23, 2013 • 4:10 am

Stevie!  He was a music genius (I haven’t heard much good from him lately), but, I think, never produced a better song than this early one, recorded for Motown in 1967, when he was just 17.  (I can’t believe Wonder is six months younger than I am: it seems that he’s been around forever.)

The song is a rocker, and exemplifies my concept of “soul,” which equates to “fervent emotionality”.

Wonder wrote it, too—in collaboration with his mother and two other people. As Wikipedia notes, he implied that it was one of his own favorites:

When asked in a 1968 interview which of his songs stood out in his mind, Wonder answered “I Was Made to Love Her because it’s a true song.”The song features Wonder’s harmonica solo in the introduction. The song also features strings following the bridge section. The song also features the use of an Electric Sitar in the opening and repeated throughout the verse. The last lyric line “You know Stevie won’t ever leave you”, refers to the singer himself.

Note that the song contains the word “chicken” (“I was knee-high to a chicken”), which, as far as I know, has appeared only two other times in pop music. Can you name those two songs? (There may be more.)

[UPDATE: There clearly are; I don’t know any of the songs suggested in the first dozen comments below.]

This version is live, but obviously lip-synched:

p.s. My second favorite song by Stevie Wonder is “Isn’t she lovely?” with that fantastic harmonica solo. But I don’t consider that a soul song. You can hear a short but great live version here.

26 thoughts on “Soul song week: 5. I Was Made to Love Her”

  1. “Mama’s cookin’ chicken fried in bacon grease. Come on along boys it’s JUST DOWN THE ROAD A PIECE”

    Can’t do the other one without looking online, which is cheating. Unless you’re stretching the definition of pop sufficiently to count “Chick chick chick chicken. Lay a little egg for me!”

  2. There’s a terrible pop song that goes: “A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut”. Band was maybe Los Ketchup or similar.

    1. That was “The Fast Food Song” by The Fast Food Rockers.

      You’ll fond it on youtube if you really want.

  4. How about Barenaked Ladies, One Week?

    “Chickity China the Chinese chicken
    You have a drumstick and your brain stops ticking”

  6. Don’t forget the best chicken line, by Iggy Pop in “Lust for Life”

    Hey man, where’d you get that lotion?
    I’ve been hurting since I bought the gimmick
    About something called love
    Yeah, something called love
    Well, that’s like hypnotising chickens

    Well, I’m just a modern guy
    Of course, I’ve had it in the ear before
    ‘Cause of a lust for life
    ‘Cause of a lust for life

  9. ‘Do the funky chicken’. There must be loads of references in old blues songs – sexual innuendo and all that – although I can’t think of any off the top of my head.

    Thanks for the themed week, Jerry, always fun.

    Miraculously, I think the whole week has managed not to mention James Jamerson, The Funk Brothers’ genius bassist; strung out on drugs, apparently he recorded the whole of Marvin Gaye’s album ‘What’s Going On’, lying on the floor of the recording studio.

  10. The Magnetic Fields’ “Chicken with its Head Cut Off” which I think counts as pop (in the Indie pop vein).

    “Well my heart’s runnin’ round like a chicken with its head cut off
    All around the barn yard falling in and out of love
    Poor thing’s blind as a bat
    Gettin’ up, fallin’ down, gettin’ up
    Who’d fall in love with a chicken with its head cut off?”

    1. Magnetic Fields have produced some of thee best pop music ever! If people actually had good taste, Magnetic Fields would be pop stars on par with the Beatles (There is no current “pop” music I’m aware that’s even worth listening to).

      Thanks for the MF reference, mammalgirl!

  12. Most obvious of all – to anyone British, anyway – “The Chicken Song“. Despite being a spoof of those annoying vacation dance-along songs (think ‘Macarena’, if you’re American), it reached number one in the British charts. The ‘two wet gits’ mentioned are the group ‘Black Lace’. And it fulfilled its final lyric:

    Now you’ve heard it once
    Your brain will spring a leak
    And though you hate this song
    You’ll be humming it for weeks

    You have been warned.

  14. Willie Dixon’s “The Red Rooster”, recorded by Howlin’ Wolf, and the Rolling Stones’ version, known as “The Little Red Rooster”. OK, they don’t use the word “chicken” but a rooster IS a male chicken!

  15. Please allow me to jump in here. One of Stevie’s most moving performances (even though it’s a religious song) is “They won’t go when I go” that he recorded in 1974 and was written by Yvonne Wright. Stevie performed it at Michael Jackson’s memorial in 2009. Please do watch this clip (skip to 4:24)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aejQHbet5YY

    Also, see his cover of a great Sting song “Fragile”. Just amazing:

  16. It’s not quite modern pop, but Mississippi John Hurt has an endearingly cute song called “The Chicken.” You can hear it here:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJEsaB1vzDE

    Hurt was not considered a bluesman, but rather a “songster,” someone who sang popular music in the age before everyone owned a record player. His “Chicken” is also educational, and is an excellent spelling tool for the kiddies:

    C is the way it begins.
    H, the next letter then,
    I am the third.
    C, what a seasonly bird.
    K is to fill him in.
    E, I’m near the end.
    C-H-I-C-K-E-N,
    That’s the way you spell chicken!

  17. It is lovely.

    I also love the aerobics moves on the left go-go dancer. It is skirting close to “I don’t give a fuck, but at least I do it in rhythm.”

  18. Also marginally a pop song, Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” —

    “Then I crossed the empty street and caught the Sunday smell of someone fryin’ chicken…”

  19. Not quite pop, but the line “I eat more chicken any man ever seen” is from “Back Door Man,” by the Doors (see comment 9 from Dermot C).

    Re: Stevie Wonder. “I Was Made to Love Her” is great, but IMHO “Isn’t She Lovely”… well, not a favorite. I’d sub in “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” but to each his own.

    Thanks for the themed week!

    LS

  20. And Louis Jordan singing “Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens.”

  22. Hasil Adkins “chicken walk”.
    Everybody’s doing the chicken chicken walk

  23. “Chicken Outlaw” by Wide Boy Awake. Sadly obscure and, to my knowledge, not even available on CD. Early 80s British band featuring former Adam and the Ants bassist, Kevin Mooney.

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