Stevie Wonder warns US voters against 'divisiveness and hatred'

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. − In the month leading up to the most heated presidential election in modern American history, Stevie Wonder went around the country with a plea: cool the political temperature and find common ground.

“Motivating and inspiring everyone with a spirit of love is the key to moving forward,” Wonder said backstage Oct. 30 before his concert at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, the penultimate stop on an unconventional tour that took him across the city . multiple swing states. The 11-city run, called Sing your song! As we mend the broken heart of our nationvisited cities such as Philadelphia and Atlanta and wrapped in Chicago on November 2.

Wonder hit the road with an air of idealism, steeped in his 1960s roots and the message of unity from his personal hero, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.. It was his first national tour in six years, motivated by the “downward spiraling circle” ‘ that he sees happening in American discourse.

“Look, I’m not 21, even though I might feel 35,” Wonder says, laughing. “Here in life we don’t know how much time we have. And I understand that very clearly. We must use every second of our time to leave a better space for everyone.”

The pop-up tour, as he and his team call it, featured an impressive 30-member band, a striking stage production and a two-and-a-half-hour set of hits. Spurred by what Wonder perceived as a national identity crisis, the hastily arranged concert caravan hit battleground states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and his native Michigan.

In Wonder’s dressing room before his show in Grand Rapids, the veteran Motown star reflected on his journey through the country’s politically contentious hotspots.

“America as a whole needs to come together because there is always someone – or a country somewhere – that wants to take away the concept of democracy and what it means,” he says. “The reality is we have to get to a point where we say, ‘Listen, we all have to come together.’”

In a campaign season packed with celebrities on both sides, Wonder is right in the middle of the action. He realizes that not everyone feels comfortable fulfilling that role.

“I think people are so afraid of being canceled or being talked about – all this stupidity that’s going on,” he says. “God is my manager, so I have been given permission to manage myself. I let people around me who I trust give me their feedback. I listen to them. But ultimately I’m going to make my own decisions.”

While there’s certainly no doubting Wonder’s political allegiance (the veteran Motown star is an outspoken supporter of Vice President Kamala Harris and performed at her nomination in August), his appearances on the October tour were more middle-of-the-road, with little heavy-handed politics.

“I know you didn’t come to hear me,” he tells his audience in Michigan. On stage, he avoided mentioning Harris or Donald Trump by name, although there were occasional detours to the former president and allies like Elon Musk. (“I’m not going to drive my Tesla. I’m going to drive my Hummer,” says the blind musician backstage, with a broad grin.)

In 2024, an arena concert production can take months or even years of preparation. Wonder’s tour was organized on the spot.

On August 30, he released the single “Can We Fix Our Nation’s Broken Heart,” calling it his “love song to America.” Within a few days he got the itch to take the message with him. Three weeks and a huge battle later, the arena tour was announced.

“It was like making the impossible possible,” Wonder says.

The resulting tour was an attempt to tune in with a grassroots feel. At Madison Square Garden in New York, Wonder recorded significant sales on the day of the show.

Wonder designed the tour to be community-focused: More than 7,200 tickets were donated to people working on the front lines of local food banks, homeless shelters and other groups.

“Negativity is unacceptable. It doesn’t matter to me which party you belong to or where you are,” says Wonder. “It’s not about blue or red. It’s about what’s really in your heart. Division and hatred, all these things have nothing to do with God’s purpose for you.”

Wonder’s return to the road received rave reviews. Surrounded by his arsenal of keyboards, the 74-year-old rolled back the years with strong vocal performances. He attributed the state of his voice to a conscious health regimen that includes a newly adopted nasal breathing technique.

Ninety minutes before the show in Grand Rapids, Wonder’s dressing room was purposefully calm.

Aisha Morris, the Wonder daughter whose 1975 birth inspired the hit “Isn’t She Lovely,” quietly dipped in and out as her Grammy-winning dad got into gaming mode. On a coffee table sat a wooden harpejji, the percussion string instrument that Wonder has fallen in love with in recent years. As he sat down on the couch for a conversation, he instinctively reached over to strum a few notes.

At one point he abruptly excused himself and paused for a moment to make a note, grabbing a small digital device designed for the blind and whistling softly as he typed Braille.

Wonder has long been politically and socially animated, leading him to embed social messages in his music since the 1970s, help lead the 1983 campaign to make King’s birthday a federal holiday, and prominently campaign for President Barack Obama and others.

But in 2024, he feels an escalated sense of urgency, driven by “the state we are in socially, politically, spiritually and mentally.” He said he is frustrated with the news media mired in “he-said-she-said” divisions, and he worries about a young population swept up in social media.

“It’s just a lot of (expletives) and it’s not going to move the nation forward,” he says.

Despite any dissatisfaction, Wonder ultimately sees himself as a positive agent for change, deeply connected to the idea of music as a unifying force. It has been his credo since his early days at Motown in Detroit, where he signed up as a nine-year-old and quickly came to see the uplifting power of art as an interracial cultural bond.

“The colors mean nothing to me, because I don’t see them either. I do know that I want to see blue skies for everyone.”