Signed, Sealed & Delivered


Signed, Sealed & Delivered is a studio album by American recording artist Stevie Wonder, released on August 7, 1970, by Tamla Records. Along with the hit title track, the album also featured the hits "Heaven Help Us All", "Never Had a Dream Come True" and Wonder's cover of The Beatles' "We Can Work It Out". The album hit #25 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart as well as #7 on the R&B Albums chart.
This was Wonder's first album on which he was given producer credit, though he actually produced only two of the tracks and co-produced three more. He wrote or co-wrote seven of the tracks.

Critical reception

Reviewing for The Village Voice in 1970, Robert Christgau said Signed, Sealed & Delivered has flawed moments, but Motown albums are rarely consistent. He concluded the album is "still the most exciting LP by a male soul singer in a very long time, and it slips into no mold, Motown's included." Rolling Stone magazine's Vince Aletti said that the album "holds more creative singing than you're likely to find in another performer's entire body of work." Aletti felt that, although not all of the songs match the energy of the title track, the album does not have a bad song and includes an "extraordinary" cover of "We Can Work It Out" that shares the other songs' "tasteful, unencumbered" arrangements.
In his list for The Village Voice, Christgau named Signed, Sealed and Delivered the eleventh best album of 1970, and later called it the best soul album of the year. In a retrospective review, Allmusic's Ron Wynn gave the album three out of five stars, noting that Wonder's focus seemed to be more on social issues than commercial concerns, and found songs such as "I Can't Let My Heaven Walk Away" and "Never Had a Dream Come True" as intriguing as the hit title track and "We Can Work It Out".

Track listing

Side One

  1. "Never Had a Dream Come True" - 3:13
  2. "We Can Work It Out" - 3:19
  3. "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours" - 2:41
  4. "Heaven Help Us All" - 3:13
  5. "You Can't Judge a Book By Its Cover" - 2:32
  6. "Sugar" - 2:52

    Side Two

  7. "Don't Wonder Why" - 4:54
  8. "Anything You Want Me To Do" - 2:19
  9. "I Can't Let My Heaven Walk Away" - 2:53
  10. "Joy " - 2:12
  11. "I Gotta Have a Song" - 2:32
  12. "Something to Say" - 3:26

    Personnel