When Stevie Wonder first walks out on stage at London’s Hyde Park – led, affectionately, by Aisha and Kailand, two of his nine children – he starts not with a song, but a speech. “Praise to God for allowing me to be here today,” says the 75-year-old rhythm and blues legend, wearing a jacket emblazoned with the glittery likeness of John Lennon and Marvin Gaye. He speaks for several minutes about love, and blindness, praising French educator Louis Braille, inventor of braille, and celebrating the “technologies” that have allowed Wonder – blind since infancy – to enjoy a nearly seven-decade-long career in music. “Every single person who is blind should be able to see in their own way,” he says.
It’s a pensive start to a night that soon shifts into giddy elation, as soon as Wonder takes his seat at the keyboard, centre-stage. The gig marks the first time the singer (real name Stevland Morris) has performed in the UK since 2019, and the last of five dates across the country as part of the Love, Light & Song tour. He kicks off proceedings with “Love’s in Need of Love Today”, a bittersweet ballad from his seminal 1976 record Songs in the Key of Life, before launching into perhaps the biggest surprise of the evening, a cover of Lennon’s “Imagine”, which leaves the singer visibly emotional.
