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.
It’s incredible just how well Wonder’s voice holds up. It’s not just smooth and on-key, but ambitious, pulling off the sort of flashy leaps and glissandos that most singers, even great ones, would have long retired by this point in their lives. He’s no less adroit with a harmonica, picking out a solo for “Imagine” that showcases his dexterity and flair.
There’s not a bad song throughout Wonder’s nearly three-hour-long set, but you can feel the energy shoot upward – on the crowd and on stage, too – whenever he dips into his A-material. A propulsive version of the reggae-inspired 1980 hit “Master Blaster (Jammin’)” is the first song to kick things into high gear, followed by the irrepressible funk groove of “Higher Ground”. Wonder’s backing band is large, and consummately tight – “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours)” becomes a breathtaking, ebullient wash of brass, percussion, and backing vocals.
There’s something joyful about Wonder’s stage persona: it’s exactly the sort of slick, confident showmanship that comes from decades of music superstardom, but it feels, somehow, innate and organic. Throughout the evening, Wonder amuses himself by approximating a broad British accent and dabbles in some endearing light-comic shtick. At various points, he hands off vocal duties to others, including his son and daughter, backing singers Janis Watts and Zuri Harris, and Corinne Bailey Rae, who sings Sly and the Family Stone’s “Everybody Is a Star” after performing her own set earlier in the afternoon. Other times, he throws it over to the crowd, at one point leading the Hyde Park audience in a sing-along of Jimmie Davis’s “You Are My Sunshine”.
As the set approaches its final third, the big hitters start to come thick and fast, all electrically catchy: “I Just Called to Say I Love You”; “Living for the City”; “Sir Duke”; “Isn’t She Lovely”; “Happy Birthday”. It’s a setlist so rich in material that you don’t even notice the top-tier songs he misses off. (There's no “Uptight”; no “For Once in My Life”; no "Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday".) By the time we reach the finale – a performance of “Superstition” that’s as inevitable as it is effective, medleyed into “As” and “Another Star” – Wonder has the crowd in rapture. With his family members beside him, he stands at the front of the stage and takes a bow.
This wasn’t meant to be the end of BST Hyde Park 2025 – Jeff Lynne’s ELO were scheduled to play on Sunday, until a late-in-the-day cancellation – but it’s hard to imagine a more triumphant end to the season. After all these years, wonder is still the only word for it.
