{"id":791238,"date":"2018-12-12T12:09:43","date_gmt":"2018-12-12T19:09:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=768189"},"modified":"2018-12-12T12:09:43","modified_gmt":"2018-12-12T19:09:43","slug":"michelle-obama-talks-stevie-wonder-early-music-memories-on-questloves-podcast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/michelle-obama-talks-stevie-wonder-early-music-memories-on-questloves-podcast\/","title":{"rendered":"Michelle Obama Talks Stevie Wonder, Early Music Memories on Questlove\u2019s Podcast"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/michelle-obama-stevie-wonder.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"\/><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/michelle-obama\/\">Michelle Obama<\/a> reminisced about her earliest musical memories in the former First Lady\u2019s conversation with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/questlove\/\" id=\"auto-tag_questlove\" data-tag=\"questlove\">Questlove<\/a>\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pandora.com\/station\/play\/4128420641515965380\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Pandora podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/stevie-wonder\/\" id=\"auto-tag_stevie-wonder\" data-tag=\"stevie-wonder\">Stevie Wonder<\/a>\u2019s <em>Talking Book<\/em> is the first album I remember getting as a gift, and I got it twice, that\u2019s how good an album it is,\u201d Obama said, adding that her copy \u2013 as did all original pressings of the 1972 album\u2013 came with Braille lettering on the sleeve.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI remember spending time not only listening to the record over and over again, but trying to feel the Braille and understand the words,\u201d Obama continued. \u201cAnd I would memorize the cover because there\u2019s something about that cover with Stevie without his glasses sitting like in a canyon area in that dashiki afghan sort of thing with the braids and all of that. That cover to me was as much the experience of the album for me. I was really trying to figure out what goes on in his mind: What is he thinking? What does it feel like being blind? How does he feel music?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Obama, who recently announced a 2019 arena tour (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/questlove-playlist-michelle-obama-book-tour-759140\/\">complete with a playlist by the Roots\u2019 drummer<\/a>), said that the first music she actually purchased for herself were Jackson 5\u2019s 1970 singles \u201cABC\u201d and \u201cThe Love You Save.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s the 45s that you played on your little makeshift record player thing \u2013 it wasn\u2019t the big stereo that your parents allowed you to use but the thing you plugged in and you had to put that little round thing in the hole,\u201d Obama said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was the music that I was allowed to play on my own, keep the record in my bedroom kind of thing. But the Jackson 5, that was what young people\u2026 We grew up imitating the Jackson 5 and putting the record on and cousins would be Tito and I\u2019d be Michael\u00a0and my brother would be on the drums, you know. We spent the whole afternoon just shaping our performance to \u2018Stop the Love You Save,\u2019 so those were some of my first memories.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Obama added that her family was \u201ctoo broke for concerts,\u201d and that she didn\u2019t see a live show until the future First Lady was a sophomore in college. However, it was a memorable first gig: Obama and a girlfriend somehow wound up with front-row tickets to see Wonder performing a small benefit show in Philadelphia, and the two women were picked out by the singer\u2019s bodyguards to join Wonder on stage to sing \u201cEbony &amp; Ivory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo I was standing onstage, with Stevie, by his piano, thinking, \u2018What?,&#8217;\u201d she said, adding of the singer who would eventually become a frequent guest at the Obama White House. \u201cI never told [Wonder] about that, because he\u2019d never remember.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/michelle-obama-stevie-wonder-questlove-podcast-768189\/\" target=\"_blank\">via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michelle Obama reminisced about her earliest musical memories in the former First Lady\u2019s conversation with Questlove\u2019s Pandora podcast. \u201cStevie Wonder\u2019s Talking Book is the first album I remember getting as a gift, and I got it twice, that\u2019s how good an album it is,\u201d Obama said, adding that her copy \u2013 as did all original [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-791238","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-11 08:14:51","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}