We continue the VERSUS series with two classic artists – Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye.
Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr. is better known by his stage name Marvin Gaye. He is considered to be one of the best American singers and songwriters in history. Gaye, who had a four octave vocal range, was a member of the doo-wop group The Moonglows in the late fifties. When the group disbanded he ventured into a solo career signing with the Tamla Records subsidiary of Motown Records. He was ranked as the label’s top-selling solo artist during the sixties.
Because of solo hits such as “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)“, “Ain’t That Peculiar“, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and his duet singles with singers such as Mary Wells and Tammi Terrell, he was crowned “The Prince of Motown”[3] and “The Prince of Soul”.[4]
His work in the early and mid-1970s, including the albums What’s Going On, Let’s Get It On, and I Want You, helped influence the quiet storm, urban adult contemporary, and slow jam genres. After a self-imposed European exile in the early eighties, Gaye returned on the 1982 Grammy-Award winning hit, “Sexual Healing” and the Midnight Love album before his death. Gaye was shot dead by his father on April 1, 1984. He was posthumously inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.
MJ VERSUS USHER VERSUS CHRIS BROWN
Stevland Hardaway Morris (previously Judkins) is best known by stage name Stevie Wonder. He’s an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and activist. Blind since shortly after birth, Wonder signed with Motown Records‘ Tamla label at the age of eleven, and continues to perform and record for Motown to this day.
Among Wonder’s best known works are singles such as “Superstition“, “Sir Duke“, “I Wish” and “I Just Called to Say I Love You“. Well known albums also include Talking Book, Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life. He has recorded more than thirty U.S. top ten hits and received twenty-two Grammy Awards, the most ever awarded to a male solo artist. Wonder is also noted for his work as an activist for political causes, including his 1980 campaign to make Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s birthday a holiday in the United States. In 2009, Wonder was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace. In 2008, Billboard magazine released a list of the Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists to celebrate the US singles chart’s fiftieth anniversary, with Wonder at number five.
He has received 25 Grammy Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Both artists accomplished great things. Had Marvin Gaye’s life not been cut short would he have been able to reach the peaks in the music industry that Stevie Wonder did?
Take our poll and tell us who you think is the baddest.
Marvin Gaye VERSUS Stevie Wonder: Who’s The Baddest?online survey
