Rhetorical Analysis

The purpose of this assignment was to select a protest song and an accompanying music video to highlight a political or ethical issue. I chose Living for the City by Stevie Wonder. The song turned 50 this year, but it is still very much relevant to today. 

Living for the City 

It is a secret to no one that African Americans have been discriminated against throughout our country’s history. While things have gotten considerably better it is still very much a problem. In 1973, the year Stevie Wonder’s classic song Living for the City was released, segregation may have been a thing of the past, but racial discrimination sure wasn’t. This prompted Wonder to write a song that accurately captured what it was like to be a person of color in New York City. It is a dreary and sometimes miserable experience for most. This unfair way of life, is what prompted Wonder to record and release it. The song was also partially inspired by the killing of a young black child by a police officer. Police brutality being an issue presented in the contents of the music and the video that accompanies it. In a 2006 interview for Uncut Wonder described the song as “a snapshot of a certain part of the reality of life,” (Simakovsky) Even Wonder’s words there as he talks of how racism is one of the “realities” of life are filled with hints of anger and longing for change. It being a reality in the first place is a huge problem.  

The video starts with images of Stevie Wonder and his 1973 album Innervisions which includes the song in question. It quickly shifts to a short clip of a hand planting a skyscraper into the ground as if it was a plant. This appears to be symbolic of the growth of New York at the time and how many new buildings were being constructed due to its booming success. This could also be a comment on the fact that while the perception of New York was a positive one, it wasn’t that way for African Americans. The video then transitions to videos of children playing in the street, a man wielding a sledgehammer and a record shop. The video shows what is good about the city before taking a more pessimistic shift. A police officer is shown and short clips of strip clubs and pornographic film advertisements. This is seemingly to show the more excessive side of New York culture at the time. A man is shown trying to apply for a job or some sort of way to acquire currency. He seems to look dejected and desperate; another glimpse of the negative side of things. A woman is seen shining shoes and then a mop is dragged across the floor which comes just after the line “His mother goes to scrub the floors for many/And you’d best believe she hardly gets a penny” (S. Wonder) More shots of the New York City landscape are shown before a shot of a Richard Nixon newspaper headline is shown. It appears to be from his Watergate scandal which led to his impeachment and eventual resignation. More clips of Nixon are shown before several shots of black females are shown, further driving home the point of it being difficult to make it as an African American woman in “the city”. Police officers are shown again, this time holding batons. The first hint the video gives at potential police brutality. Run down neighborhoods and buildings are displayed. Images of low fuel or no fuel signs are resent suggesting a gasoline shortage. The video ends with the same building that was “planted” in the beginning of the video. This time the clip is played in reverse to suggest the opposite. It gives the video a depressing and dark ending.  

This video was distributed by Motown Records. An extremely popular record label at the time which distributed the music of many black artists including Stevie Wonder’s. While people of all different racial backgrounds enjoyed the music coming from Motown, it was especially important to the black community. The video was created as a visual aid to a song that was already riddled with image inducing lyrics. It further drives home the point of just how tough it was to be successful or even just partially “make it” as an African American at the time. While some of the videos and images are metaphorical, most of what it shows are seemingly uninteresting clips and events throughout the city. However, when these images are intertwined with the music and the contents of lyrics, the images take on a tremendous amount of meaning. When making a protest song sometimes a visual aid can be needed to really drive home the points trying to be made in the song.  

There are sadly many people in this country that believe racism isn’t a very big issue. Segregation ended in 1964 and that leads many to believe that the issue of race is a thing of the past. This is certainly not the case as many people of color are being discriminated against daily. While you see much less examples of obvious racism today, the systemic racism that has continued is really what people are fighting to change. In Our Black Sons Matter it is described how, from birth, young people of color in America start their lives at a severe disadvantage purely due to their skin color. “There are millions of loving mothers, across racially marked divides, of black sons who are painfully aware what it means to give birth and to raise Black sons in a world that marks their sons from birth as ‘unwanted,’ as ‘problems’ who are already so-called criminals, uneducable thugs, and surplus bodies” (Yancy) These heartbreaking words, from a mother that wants only the best for her son perfectly describe just how much tougher it is for people of color and more specifically boys of color to make it in this cruel world. This sentiment is exactly what Living for the City is really trying to highlight the downside of. These negative ideas many people have of people of color are what is holding not only those affected back, but it is also holding back us as a society.  

I chose this song because it is one of my most favorite songs of all time. For most of my life, largely thanks to my father, I have been a fan of Stevie Wonder’s music. For Christmas of 2021 I was gifted a turntable and some vinyl records. One of those records was entitled Stevie Wonder’s Musiquarium. It is greatest hits record with a bunch of Wonder’s classic tunes. I had heard most of them but the third song on the record was Living for the City, which I had never heard before. I was immediately struck by its dark tone and pounding bassline in the intro. The lyrics speak for themselves and really made me stop and think. To this day it is a song I can put on at any time, because I never get tired of hearing it. The music and the words are a perfect union, and the message is one everyone needs to hear today. 

Works Cited 

"Stevie Wonder - Living for the City." Youtube, uploaded by cctaximan, November 11, 2007,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSRyf5G2uI8 

Yancy, George. Our Black Sons Matter : Mothers Talk about Fears, Sorrows, and Hopes, edited by George Yancy, et al., Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central,

   https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/coastal/detail.action?docID=4677066. 

Simakovsky, Rob. “New York Series: Stevie Wonder ‘Living for the City.’” NYS Music, New York Series Music, 26 Apr. 2023, 

nysmusic.com/2021/11/24/new-york-series-stevie-wonder-living-for-the-city/.