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By 1973 Stevie Wonder had shed the Little Stevie image through Music of My Mind and Talking Book. On Innervisions, released August 3, 1973, he played nearly every instrument himself, from drums and bass to Fender Rhodes, clavinet and the TONTO synthesizer system built by associate producers Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, who pushed him toward social and spiritual themes. The album covered drug paranoia on Too High, systemic racism on Living for the City and Richard Nixon on He’s Misstra Know-It-All. For Living for the City’s final verse, the producers kept interrupting his takes until he was hoarse and angry.

Three days after release, on August 6, Wonder was asleep in the passenger seat after a concert in Greenville, South Carolina, when the car, driven by friend John Harris near Durham, North Carolina, hit a logging truck. A log smashed through the windshield and struck his forehead. He lay in a coma in Winston-Salem for 10 days, his head badly swollen, until tour director Ira Tucker sang Higher Ground into his ear and Wonder’s fingers began tapping the rhythm. Later, afraid his ability was gone, he hesitated before touching a clavinet Tucker brought to the hospital.

• He temporarily lost his sense of smell and took medication for a year for headaches and fatigue.
• Bandmate Michael Sembello said the accident brought his spirituality to the surface, deepening his belief in God, reincarnation and ESP.
• Wonder called surviving the crash his second chance at life and saw Higher Ground as almost a premonition.
• At Madison Square Garden in late March 1974 he pointed to his scar and thanked God before 21,000 fans.
• Innervisions reached No. 4 on the Billboard albums chart and No. 1 on Soul LPs, and won Album of the Year and Best Engineered Non-Classical Recording, with Living for the City winning Best R&B Song.