Isn't She Lovely

I first heard it when I was 6, driving in Yosemite in Northern California with the windows rolled down and music playing softly in the background, driving aimlessly or to one destination or another. The song came on, and I asked my dad to turn up the volume, roll up the windows, so I could fully hear what I was listening to. The song Isn't She Lovely by Stevie Wonder isn't in itself a complicated song, or any masterpiece really. It contains three verses, or stanzas, that are simply repeated over and over. There is no hidden message or metaphor within its lyrics, no extreme sadness or sorrow or feeling of depression that are conveyed in its verses, as many songs do. Nor does it tell a story, a progression of events that have happened in the songwriter's life or a narrative of any sort. So why did it appeal to me so much?

The song itself emulates love, pure and simple. It was not a love I could or can relate to; the feeling of having a new child; who is all yours and who you created and are responsible for. Yet when searching deeper, are there truly different kinds of loves, or is it all the same? Is love, by its definition, diverse and varying for those who experience it, since all bonds in life are so dissimilar as they vary from person to person in terms of experiences shared, personalities, and the relationships themselves. Or is love the same for all that feel it, the same feeling, the same notion? Whatever the answer to this rhetorical and indisputable question may be, Isn't she Lovely has stuck with me for a little more than 7 years.

I've heard renditions of it several times, on various T.V. shows and so forth, and all of them stir something inside of me. Yet it is the original version, the Stevie Wonder version, that touches me the most. Firstly, because Stevie Wonder is blind and therefore has never actually seen his daughter, yet he writes her a song her a song as a declaration of his love. In the original Stevie Wonder version, there are also recordings of his daughter's newborn cries in the background as the song is playing. Stevie Wonder therefore uses his hearing, and his senses other than sight, to learn about his daughter and to show that one can love without sight, and that a proclamation of love can be issued without the aid of sight. The song doesn't contain a "worldly" message, one that speaks of social issues and how we can make the world a better place; it does't tell a story, or contain a complex and thought-provoking message. It is just love for his daughter. It is something that touches us all, and, in one way or another, we relate to.