29. "Someday at Christmas," Stevie Wonder
Tamla 54142 b/w "The Miracles of Christmas"Highest chart position: #24 (1966)
Recorded August 1966, Detroit, MI
Leave it to Stevie Wonder -- just then starting to throw the "Little" moniker off his career and find his own, nearly-adult voice -- to beat even John Lennon to the Christmas anti-war song. It wasn't exactly commercial to do such a thing in '66, either, even with the Vietnam backlash gaining momentum, but the words (which Stevie didn't write) also name check poverty, hunger, and equality, tying pretty much all of the Sixties movements together into the Christian ideal the season is supposed to represent. A little naive, perhaps, and painted in broad strokes -- but then, so was Lennon's "Imagine." And it's similarly levelheaded about how long Utopia might take, describing it as something that "May be not in time for you and me." Heavy stuff for a 16-year-old, even a genius one.
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Watch a video of "Someday at Christmas" on YouTube
