One of the Greatest Songwriters of our time

If you are new to Stevie Wonder's music...this is a great introduction. Stevie is a visionary. He can play any style of music and his voice transcends time. In short, he is a genius.



Various albums that you should also listen to include Innervisions and Songs In the Key of Life, Vol I...



My favorites on this album are That Girl and the most beautiful song....Superwoman.



I couldn't even begin to share what this man's music means to me. Get it, listen, absorb it. He is one of the all-time greats.

The cream of the crop...

If you're looking for "I Just Called To Say I Love You", look elsewhere. If you're looking for "Fingertips" and "My Cherie Amour", it's not here. The recent ""Definitive Collection" and "Song Review" cover more, and "At the Close of A Century" is the mother lode,covering 4 CDs worth of Stevie's material.



This collection of songs represents Stevie's seemingly nonstop Grammy winning era (covering Music of My Mind to Hotter Than July), where every year, he'd be up for album and song of the year, pop and R&B, and with good reason.



Because the songs Stevie picked for this collection were recorded within the 70s into the early 80s, it's one of the few compilations that a lot of people don't notice being from different albums and is timeless in its own right (unlike the more Motown-sounding earlier albums and drumbeat sounds on the 80s albums, although Characters, Jungle Fever and Conversation Peace are pretty good)



Out of the "new" songs, "Ribbon in the Sky" is as big a hit as the other songs on here. The only faults people will find with it are songs like "As", "Too High", "Pasttime Paradise", "Love's In Need of Love", and "All In Love is Fair" not being on there. The songs are timeless for better or worse... some of the more socially conscious songs are as relevant in 2004 as they were in 1975.



The songs have been covered and sampled by just about everyone you can think of. Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jeff Beck, Alicia Keys, Barbra Streisand, and even Lindsay Lohan and American Idol tried their hand at these songs. But Stevie not only wrote the songs, but played most of the instruments and did the arrangements. It'll be something that people 100 years will still be grooving and singing along to... Musiquarium should be put in a time capsule, and every music lover should put this on their "desert island disc" list.



As I said, this is one that stands on its own from beginning to end, and you won't feel like it's a waste whatsoever to get the CDs that the songs originally came from. Essential? Absolutely.

There Are Better Stevie Collections, But This One Is Special

I'm a huge Stevie fan, and I have the "At The Close Of A Century" boxed set, which is the best Stevie collection out there, but I still love "Original Musiquarium 1", his 1982 "best - of", it's nowhere as complete as "ATCOAC", but it does hold a sentimental value.



The reason why this two disc set is so special to me is because it was the cd that turned me on to Stevie. It was about 10 years ago and we were driving out to my grandparents' summer home in Pennsylvania, about an hour drive. It was late at night and we all wanted to listen to something relaxing, so my dad put on "Original Musiqurium 1". The song that got me hooked was "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life". I was only four at the time, but I remember how enthalled I was by his music.



Looking back on it 10 years later, I still love every minute of this cd, from the plodding intro of "Higher Ground" to the blaring horns of "Do I Do" to the simple romaticism of "Ribbon In The Sky" (a song featured in my parents' wedding video) to the funky "I Wish" to those timeless opening chords of "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life" and everything in between.



My only wish is that since this collection was originally released 23 years ago, they could have added more songs to make it an anniversary edition. I would have been nice to have "As" (currently my all time favorite Stevie song), "Another Star", "All I Do", "Rocket Love", "If It's Magic", "If You Really Love Me", "I Believe", "Knocks Me Off My Feet", "I Ain't Gonna Stand For It" and "Lately".



But still, this is such a great collection. I think everyone should own this classic album of classic music by a musical genius.