All-Stars Honor Stevie Wonder, Stevie Wonder Upstages All-Stars at Grammy Tribute

all photos: Reuters

The music luminaries that partied at Los Angeles’s Staples Center at Sunday night’s Grammys moved the festivities across the street Tuesday to the Nokia Theater, to honor 25-time Grammy-winner Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder: Songs In the Key of Life — An All-Star Grammy Salute featured such illustrious talent as Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Ed Sheeran, Pharrell Williams, John Legend, and Tony Bennett, but in the end, none of these stars were able to outshine Wonder himself.

"If you make music in any way, you learned something from Stevie Wonder," host LL Cool J told the celebrity-packed audience. "Thank God for Stevie Wonder."

Among the show’s highlights were an unbilled Beyoncé making a surprise appearance alongside Ed Sheeran and guitar great Gary Clark Jr. for a fiery "Fingertips Pt. 2"/“Master Blaster”/”Higher Ground” medley; Sheeran returning for a vibey, loop-pedal-assisted solo take on “I Was Made to Love Her”; and dynamite divas Jill Scott, Janelle Monae, and India.Arie forming a modern-day girl group (with an introduction from the Supremes’ Mary Wilson!) to sing “As.”

But the best all-star performance came from a fiercely funky Lady Gaga, who banged out “I Wish” at her electric piano with complete abandon and gushed to Wonder, who was sitting in the front row: “Stevie, you were a part of my life at such a young age… Your album was my first CD that I put myself in at age 6 in the CD player. It blew my mind. I think about this song and I think about my childhood and that moment, and I wish I could go back just one more time.”

The show wasn’t without some missteps, or at least not without some odd booking choices. Mismatched duets between Pharrell Williams/OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder and Babyface/Ariana Grande (respectively on “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing” and “Signed, Sealed, Delivered”) never quite gelled. Opera singer Andrea Bocelli taking on Wonder’s probably least-liked single, the sappy “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” was a definite lowlight. Country trio the Band Perry seemed very out of their element struggling through a limp and unsoulful “You Haven’t Done Nothing,” a song assignment that made absolutely no sense. And Annie Lennox’s incredible vocal talents were sadly wasted on a relatively easy song to sing, “My Cherie Amour,” which was anticlimactic after her scene-stealing, show-stopping “I Put a Spell on You” tour de force just two days earlier at the actual Grammys. (Honestly, even though Jennifer Hudson did an excellent job Tuesday belting “All Is Fair in Love,” that song probably should have gone to Lennox instead.)

And speaking of wasted talents, at least three of the show’s previously advertised performers — Usher, Chris Martin, and Willie Nelson — were unexplained no-shows, and it was a real shame that two of Wonder’s Motown peers, Gladys Knight and Mary Wilson, were relegated to mere presenter status, introducing other (read: younger, hipper, more ratings-friendly) artists rather than singing themselves.

But really, the night was all about Wonder. Along with ending the evening with his own fantastic five-song mini-set (“Sir Duke,” “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” “Ribbon in the Sky,” “Overjoyed,” and “Superstition”), he was the focus of one of the evening’s most touching moments. Introducing a performance by Ne-Yo of “Isn’t She Lovely,” the classic song inspired by the birth of Wonder’s daughter Aisha Morris, LL Cool J asked the audience members to close their eyes, so that they could experience what Wonder’s life is like, saying: “He’s loved [Aisha] for 40 years, but has only seen her in his mind.” And soon, there were few dry eyes in the house, when Morris herself joined Ne-Yo onstage, changing the lyrics of “Isn’t She Lovely” to honor her proud, beaming father.

As every all-star in the building — including presenters Jamie Foxx (who amusingly declared, “Stevie Wonder has more talent in his braids than most artists out today”), Tyler Perry, and Maya Rudolph — gathered onstage for a group-singalong finale of Wonder’s Martin Luther King Jr. tribute song “Happy Birthday,” Wonder ended the night on the highest of high notes, telling the elated audience:

"I could not leave this building, this planet, without letting you all know how much I thank you. I love you. I love you, first of all, because the god that I serve says we should love everyone. I also love you because it feels better to love than to hate… I believe that if we could just come together — because we must come together, because we are at spiritual warfare — we must, without question, let the world know that love is king and queen… I encourage all of us as artists to write songs about love. Love is the key, and you’ve given me love, and I thank you for it.”

Stevie Wonder: Songs In the Key of Life — An All-Star Grammy Salute will air Monday, Feb. 16 on CBS.

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