Stevie Wonder "Isn’t She Lovely"

Jim,

Absolutely correct. I was in regular contact with Motown and their local distributor at the time, for our station, KFJZ-FM (Z-97), was far and away the dominant Top 40 in Dallas/Fort Worth at the time. We charted Isn't She Lovely extremely high based on our call-out research and request activity. Motown asked us to hold off (we didn't), then admitted that they pressured Stevie to OK a 45 release. He refused. Tensions were so high that Motown had to back off for fear of completely alienating their main artist. So there was never a 45 of that song in the US, ever.

GM

Going back to this thread from nearly 8 years ago (!) ... I now have the import version of "Song Review" (which is a single disc set, not double like the US), and which includes an edit of "Isn't She Lovely". In fact, the CD opens with the song. Basically, they start the song about 0:30 in, on the downbeat, and simply fade early - it comes to about 3:19.

I do believe Jim is correct that there were NEVER any edits done of this song back in the '70s; furthermore, I wondered if this may have been a single overseas, so I did some checking. The wikipedia page for Stevie Wonder's discography lists "Isn't She Lovely" (because it peaked on the AC chart) but also lists 9 countries in total for all his singles - and "Isn't She Lovely" just didn't chart in any other country listed. Nine countries isn't a whole lot (and Australia is not even listed on the Stevie Wonder singles page), but there seems to be no evidence that this ever came out as a single anywhere. I believe this edit was made for this import CD (released in 1996 and probably created in 1996) in order to fit 21 songs on this one-disc set - which times out at 78:47, making it impossible for the 6-minute version to be included without cutting out another song.

Edited by EdisonLite