Do we like Stevie Wonder?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decades of campaigning on civil rights, disability access and the climate, with one clumsy 2012 comment and a pending property dispute to weigh.
Born in Saginaw, Michigan in 1950, Stevie Wonder signed with Motown at 11 and had his first chart-topper with Fingertips Part 2 in 1963. From there it's a run that hardly seems real: an Oscar for I Just Called to Say I Love You, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1989, and 25 Grammy wins from 75 nominations.
The one real blot on the harm test is from 2012. In a Guardian interview about Frank Ocean he said “some people who think they're gay, they're confused.” After the backlash he told The Advocate he was sorry his words were misunderstood, and said love is love whatever the combination of partners.
Is that a pattern? Not on what we found. We turned up no anti-trans campaigning, no conspiracy rabbit holes and no dodgy company in the searches, though the record on LGBTQ+ topics is thin either way. An apology doesn't wipe the slate on its own, so he gets an asterisk and not a clean sheet.
On the planet, he closed a 2017 hurricane relief telethon speech by saying “Anyone who believes there's no such thing as global warming must be blind or unintelligent.” Cheeky, but it's on the right side of the science.
The recent drama is a civil suit. According to reports based on the complaint, he has asked a California court to evict an occupant who has lived since 1988 in a Hollywood Hills house he owns. The complaint alleges she broke a verbal agreement by refusing entry to insurance inspectors. She disputes it, and he hasn't commented publicly. It's pending, and it's a property fight, not a scandal.
The good stuff is the real stuff. After the King Holiday Bill fell short in 1979 he wrote Happy Birthday, and the holiday was signed in late 1983 and first observed in 1986. In 2013 he urged WIPO negotiators in Marrakesh to finish a treaty on books for blind and print-disabled people.