Stevie Wonder was clearly a genius, and proved it in 1963 with his #1 hit "Fingertips (Part 2)," which was taken from an impromptu live recording. Motown Records put plenty of promotion behind him (getting him appearances in the movies Muscle Beach Party and Bikini Beach), but they couldn't get his talent to come across in a studio recording. With the top Motown producers passing on Stevie, it was looking bleak until he started working with Sylvia Moy and Henry Cosby. Moy had Stevie play her different song ideas he had come up with, but wasn't impressed with any of them. Pressing to make sure he didn't have anything else, Wonder reluctantly played her something he had been working on: a ditty where he sang, "Everything is alright, uptight." Moy likes what she heard and helped him develop the song along with Cosby. The song went to #3 in the US and from that point forward, Wonder was a regular at the top of the charts.
In this song, Wonder is in bliss because he has found the girl of his dreams. He's dirt poor, but it doesn't matter because he's in love. Loggins & Messina expressed a similar sentiment in their 1972 track "Danny's Song."
Wonder received his first songwriting credit for his work on this track. Just 15 years old it marked his first UK hit and his first US Top-10 since his days as "Little Stevie Wonder." In his teenage years, Wonder honed his craft under the tutelage of the Motown staff, and in 1969 he negotiated a deal that made him one of the first artists to write, produce, arrange, and perform his own songs.
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