Talk:Living for the City/Archive 1

Untitled
Does anybody know who performs the spoken interlude? This would be really useful information Paul210 15:55, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

External links removed, as they do not exist anymore. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.101.205.232 (talk) 15:59, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

This doesn't cite any references or sources!
Poor.--Holy Roman Empire (talk) 01:26, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Mention of song's origins on Rosie O'Donnell Show'
Rosie O'Donnell interviewed Stevie Wonder about his life and career on one of her shows, and Stevie is quotesd as saying the song was supposed to be about Detroit, and that 'New York City' was inserted into the song's spoken section due to some very serious social unrest in the Detroit area at the time.

The riots had taken place only six years prior to the recording of the song, and in the wake of that there were gang wars in the early 70s and those were at a simmer at the time although things were going on regarding those.

According to Wonder, if the song had gone out with 'Detroit' even mentioned, the powderkeg atmosphere surrounding Detroit and the gang wars would have absolutely exploded, and we would have seen another large-scale riot. That is the reason for the setting change to New York, since it was much larger even then and more generic of a place for the scene depicted to be set.

Other instances of editing the song: XEROK 800 Juarez/El Paso was a major top-40 station at the time, and they only omitted the spoken segment, but leaving everything else in. The station was widely heard at night in the western and southern United States, and was known by the moniker 'X-ROK 80'. The reason for such widespread availability at night was that Mexican clear channel stations coulod operate at a power of 150kw, whereas American clear channel stations could only operate at a power of 50kw.

A very few others aired a very similar edit, all of them were done in-house, but most only played the first half of the song.

In February 1974, Casey Kasem aired the entire version of the song on American Top 40. The song was on its way down after peaking, and was at #13 the week it was aired on the show in full. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.41.169.177 (talk) 20:26, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Hidden swear words
Is it just me or does he at one point sing something along the lines of "...the fucking crime is shitty" during one of the repeated sections? 12 May 2014‎ 81.99.84.226


 * Just you I think. SilkTork (talk) 10:58, 9 August 2020 (UTC)