Maybe Your Baby

Album: Talking Book (1972)
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Songfacts®:

  • Stevie Wonder follows the heartfelt "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life" on his 1972 Talking Book album with a much different song: "Maybe Your Baby," where he has a bad feeling his girl is cheating on him with his best friend. He calls his doctor for help and gets the diagnosis: "Maybe your baby done made some other plans."
  • Wonder assumes different voices on this song, essentially having a conversation with himself. He could control his voice so well that he could sound like different singers (check out his Songs In The Key Of Life track "As"), but on "Maybe Your Baby" he got some help from technology, pitching his vocals up in places.
  • Wonder had earned complete creative control from his label, Motown Records, this time, and he certainly used it. He had a band of ace musicians that he used to perform live and record at various studios spread among his tour stops, but he ended up playing most of the parts himself on the recordings. He had a custom-built synthesizer dubbed TONTO that allowed him to be essentially a one-man band, something Prince would do years later. The main instrument on "Maybe Your Baby" is Wonder's Clavinet, also heard prominently on "Superstition."

    The only other musician on the track is Ray Parker, Jr. on guitar, later known for his hit "Ghostbusters."
  • Around this time, Wonder was constantly coming up with song ideas that he would toy around with at soundchecks and in the studio. David Sanborn, who played saxophone in his band, told the New York Times: "I remember us working on ideas for that song on the road. I remember the chorus — "Maybe your baby done made some other plans" — and just the funky underbed of the tune. A lot of these were free-floating ideas that he later formulated in the songs. We'd go into a soundcheck and he would sit down and start playing a groove or something."

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