The Rather Insane ‘Stevie Wonder is Not Blind’ Conspiracy

During a curious brief impromptu interview held with Stevie Wonder at Los Angeles International Airport in 2017, the legendary musician, singer-songwriter, producer, and occasional one-man band, made a tantalising teaser about an imminent public revelation.

Stevie had just casually told the reporter from TMZ that he’d flown and landed a couple of planes in his time, prompting the reporter to ask if the supposedly blind recording artist was ever going to ‘come out’ one day.

At this point, Stevie stared meaningfully into the TV camera – well, he stared meaningfully at the TV camera – and solemnly declared that he would be revealing the whole truth later that year.

It sounded as if he might be on the verge of finally confirming the rumours which had been quietly swirling around the media ever since around 2005:

One of the most acclaimed and commercially successful musicians in history had only been pretending to be blind ever since he released his very first record back in 1962 at the tender age of just eleven.

A lot of people might feel a bit cheated if this were proved to be true.

I was about to say that Stevie Wonder must be the most famous blind musician in history, with maybe Ray Charles coming in second. The only problem is that I feel a lot of people – perhaps even Simon? - might struggle to name a third or fourth.

We could go with names such as Andrea Bocelli, Diane Schuur, José Feliciano, and Ronnie Milsap, but none of them ever saw their name in lights in quite the same way as Stevie Wonder couldn’t.

It might be easier to suggest that Stevie Wonder is simply the most famous blind person in history. I can’t think of many others who give him a run for his money, aside from maybe Helen Keller and Daredevil, the latter of whom often gets ruled out for being a fictional comic strip character.

And it would feel like a crushing blow if the most famous blind person in history had actually just been pulling the wool over our eyes all this time.

The prosecution in this case will be led by myself, Danny – a reasonably sighted writer who only experiences temporary cases of near-blindness whenever somebody punches me in the face and breaks my glasses. That has happened to me at least three times that I can remember, although thankfully not very recently, and I probably deserved at least one of them.

When it comes to the defence, I’ll be handing over to my fellow writer and cellmate Dave Page who also claims to be blind, and who will be able to provide a deeper insight into the potentially flawed logic of The Wonder Truthers.

But I should warn the defence right now that I’ve got more than just the theories of a few online crackpot conspirators to work with here.

The allegations over Stevie Wonder faking his blindness have been fuelled over recent years by hard video evidence, suspicious public behaviour from the man himself, and the testimony of a raft of high-profile witnesses including the likes of Boy George, Lionel Richie, Keith Richards, and the mighty Shaquille O’Neal.

With tongue planted firmly in cheek – and with a very early clarification that I consider Stevie Wonder to be a bona fide musical genius and all-round top guy whom I have no intention of genuinely disrespecting in any way – I’d be interested to see how the defence team can possibly dish up any compelling explanations for the weight of evidence against the man who has been recklessly leading us all in the wrong direction for so long…

The 12-Year-Old Genius…Live!

I didn’t always think Stevie Wonder was a genius.

Back when I was a very young kid growing up in the 1980s, I only ever associated him with the simplistic drivel that he was pumping out at the time, such as ‘I Just Called To say I Love You’ and ‘Ebony and Ivory’ – the latter being a duet with Paul McCartney which compared racial equality to keys on a piano. Both those tracks topped the charts all over the world, so I suspect Stevie Wonder doesn’t really give a shit what I thought of them.

It wasn’t until much later in my life that I discovered Stevie Wonder’s quite incredible back catalogue – most specifically his ‘classic period’ during the course of the 1970s – and I realised that he was a strong contender for the most talented and most innovative artist of all time.

But before we get to the good stuff at the end of Side One, we first have to rewind the cassette right back to the beginning where life had not got off to the greatest start for a kid born Steveland Hardaway Judkins – and I’m not talking about his visual impairment or his embarrassingly long-winded name.

Steveland’s mother Lulu Mae Hardaway had been abandoned as a baby and spent most of her childhood getting passed between less-than-enthusiastic relatives. Whilst still in her teens, she married an allegedly nasty piece of work called Calvin Judkins who was thirty years her senior.

Lulu had two children with Judkins – the second of whom was Steveland Hardaway Judkins, born in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1950.

But according to her own 2002 memoir, Lulu suffered brutally at the hands of her husband who at one point forced her into prostitution as a response to the desperate financial situation, and threatened her with beatings if she didn’t comply.

Stevie Wonder has never made a public comment on the accusations made by his mother in the book, and it’s speculated that he was never even aware of his father’s behaviour until the release of the book.

The good news is Lulu left the abusive Judkins when Stevie was just four years old, and moved with the children to Detroit.

But the family were still living in poverty, and Lulu often had to steal coal just to try and keep everyone warm.

A deeply religious soul, she felt that God was punishing her with endless bad fortune for some sin she had unwittingly committed – and she even felt that Steveland’s blindness may have been a part of God’s vengeance. She had tried taking her son to faith healers to help miraculously restore his eyesight, but Detroit appeared to be running short on impossible miracles in the 1950s.

Whilst a young Steveland was naturally concerned that his mother was often to be found in floods of tears, his famously upbeat and positive attitude was already in evidence at the age of just five when he assured his weeping mother: “Don’t worry about me being blind, because I’m happy.”

And it seems that the family’s run of bad fortune was destined to change forever when a young Steveland quickly got busy embracing his passion for making music.

He spent much of his childhood playing around with different instruments whilst singing for the choir at the Whitestone Baptist Church.

Before he’d even entered double digits, Steveland had already taught himself how to play the piano, the harmonica, and the drums.

And here’s where a welcome slice of good luck finally came into the play for the struggling family.

Steveland’s school friend Gerald just happened to be the younger brother of a certain Ronnie White – the baritone singer and co-founder of The Miracles who had already become the first hugely successful signing for the relatively fresh ‘Motown Records’ label, and who would go onto become regarded as one of the most influential bands in history.

In 1961, Gerald invited his famous older brother to come and check out the musical talents of his amazing 11-year-old blind friend who appeared to master just about every instrument he could get his hands on.

After Steveland knocked the socks off Ronnie White with renditions of self-penned material, the gifted youngster was taken along to the HQ of Motown Records where the founder and CEO Berry Gordy swiftly offered a recording deal to the kid who would now be known as Little Stevie Wonder.

It wasn’t the most lucrative recording contract ever signed. Stevie’s mother was paid just $2.50 a week to help cover expenses – around $26 a week today – whilst Stevie’s royalties of just 2% of every record sale would be held in a trust until he hit the age of 21.

Such a lousy deal wasn’t uncommon at the time for a fresh signing – even The Beatles had to share between them a royalty rate of just a penny on the sale of their early singles.

But the boy Wonder probably wasn’t getting too excited about the prospect of cashing in his wealth anyway. His early material, consisting largely of instrumental covers, failed to set the world alight, and it wasn’t until the release of a live rendition of the instrumental ‘Fingertips’ in 1963 that he first hit the big time.

The track topped the US singles charts, making Little Stevie Wonder the youngest ever artist to hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 at the age of just 13 – a record he still holds today.

It would be nice to think that he eventually made at least enough money from this to treat the whole family to a slap-up meal.

At McDonald’s.

His mother Lulu Mae Hardaway may also have been able to contribute to a Happy Meal as she would go on to become a regular co-writer of her son’s teenage material, and picked up a nomination for a Grammy along the way.

It’s often thought today that everything was plain sailing from here on in, but in fact the sixties were generally a bit of a patchy period for the child prodigy.

Subsequent releases failed to remotely match the success of ‘Fingertips’, and when Little Stevie’s voice began to break, the Motown head cheese Berry Gordon was ready to admit that the career of his one-hit Wonder may already be over.

However, Berry was eventually persuaded to finance a last-chance album, and after dropping the ‘Little’ from the stage name, the maturing teenager was given a new lease of life and a change of direction in 1965 with the release of the decidedly funkier ‘Uptight (Everything’s Alright)’ on which he showcased a fresh sound and his first co-writing credentials on a single.

Yet whilst he scored a few more hits before the decade was out, there were plenty of flops too. Of the twelve albums he released in total during the sixties, only three of them achieved any kind of meaningful impact on either side of the Atlantic whilst five of them failed to chart at all.

And much of his early output is now largely forgotten by everyone aside from the most ardent of fans.

It wasn’t until the 1970s that Stevie Wonder finally began to hit a long-running groove.

When Stevie asked to have far more creative freedom over his future works, the request was initially denied by Berry Gordon.

However, as the contract was up for renewal, Stevie decided to make it clear that he was in no rush to sign a new deal with Motown, and he allowed the contract to expire.

This appeared to inspire a dramatic change of heart for Berry Gordon who came chasing after Stevie with a pen and paper which presumably contained braille text otherwise it would have been a bit useless.

Not only was Stevie granted the creative freedom he had long desired, he also negotiated a much healthier deal in which he now received 14% of all royalties, along with an advance of close to a million dollars and several other juicy financial perks.

And this paved the way for the celebrated ‘classic period’ of Stevie Wonder which really was the proper shit.

Stevie is one of the major artists credited with ushering in the new era of the album.

Up until this point, many record labels, including Motown, still focused largely on the singles market, whilst the accompanying albums were often just quickly padded out with B-sides and crap cover versions.

Stevie now insisted that only his own compositions should appear on much more cohesive and thematic long-form pieces of work on which he began to play around with electronic sounds and overdubs whilst taking on most of the instruments himself to effectively become a one-man band.

This resulted in a long chain of groundbreaking, massively successful, and critically-lauded albums throughout the 1970s including ‘Music of My Mind’, ‘Talking Book’, ‘Innervisions’, and ‘Songs in the Key of Life’.

The artwork on the album sleeves was usually a bit pants, and I presume that Stevie Wonder wasn’t responsible for giving final approval on that kind of thing.

But each and every one of these albums was a masterpiece passionately crafted by a genius at the height of his powers.

I know that the word ‘genius’ gets bandied around far too liberally these days, but Stevie Wonder is most definitely the genuine article, right up there with Lennon and McCartney, Prince, Brian Wilson, and Nik Kershaw.

Of course, that couldn’t last forever.

His material was widely considered to have gone off the boil during the 1980s and beyond, leading up to his deeply underwhelming last album to date in 2005.

But he continued to pack out the arenas during these subsequent decades, and he is still undoubtedly one of the most successful and acclaimed musicians ever, clocking up over 100 million album sales worldwide and picking up a record 25 Grammy Awards.

And whilst he’s obviously taking things a little easier these days at the age of 74, he still seems to be in fine form today, and I caught him on television just last night on stage at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where he performed the classic ‘Higher Ground’ from 1973.

That was probably a wise choice, as I’m not sure how much presidential nominee Kamala Harris would have appreciated a rendition of ‘Isn’t She Lovely’.

The truly refreshing and inspiring thing about Stevie Wonder though, is that despite being one of the most famous and admired people in the world over the last fifty years, he’s not at all prone to acting like an utter dick.

He’s certainly led an eventful personal life. He’s been married three times and found the time to father no less than nine children by five different women. And that’s only so far.

But he reportedly still enjoys a healthy relationship with nearly all his ex-wives and partners. Well, not quite all of them. He settled out of court with ex-partner Angela McAfee who sued him in 2001 for $30 million on the grounds that he broke a promise to fund the rest of her life, and gave her genital herpes.

But the point is that, with the natural rare exceptions to any rule, you’ll not find many people who have a bad word to say about Stevie Wonder, and he was never much of a hellraiser.

You’d never catch him trashing a hotel room or getting busted in a drugs raid. He lives an incredibly clean lifestyle, strictly abstaining from drugs, drink, tobacco, and more recently, meat and dairy products.

He did apparently once experiment with weed when he was very young, but didn’t care much for the sensation of feeling as if he’d lost a vital part of his brain, and has steered well clear ever since.

I raised an eyebrow at this as I felt sure he must have been dropping at least eight acid tabs a day when he was writing and recording some of the more psychedelic ’70s stuff. But apparently not. And he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to tell fibs. Or so I’ve been led to believe so far.

You’re far more likely to catch Stevie Wonder – an official United Nations Member of Peace, no less – spending his spare time working for charitable foundations, fighting hard for civil and human rights, and generally spreading positivity and good vibes across the globe.

For example, he played a typically instrumental role in ensuring that Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday became a federal holiday in the US.

The idea had been floating around ever since the revered civil rights leader was assassinated in 1968, but it didn’t really take flight until Stevie Wonder became closely involved with the campaign in the early 1980s. The track ‘Happy Birthday’ was deployed to help raise awareness of a petition supporting the campaign that eventually amassed over six million signatures.

Even then, the petition was bitterly opposed by certain Senators who protested that Martin Luther King Jr wasn’t important enough, and besides, he may have been a secret communist.

President Ronald Reagan’s initial main concerns were the costs of introducing a new holiday, but he eventually signed the bill into law in 1983, leading to the first ‘Martin Luther King Jr Day’ in 1986, although some states resisted observing the holiday in the early years.

Of course it very rarely falls on his actual birthday because that’s national holidays for you, but there’s not too long to wait until it next falls on the right day again in 2034.

But all this backstory of an all-round good geezer does seem somewhat at odds with the theory that Stevie Wonder has been living a big lie all his life.

And if it turns out that he’s just been pulling our leg about being blind for all this time, then I would suggest that he deserves at least some recognition and respect for all the effort he must have put into it.

Why exactly he would pretend to be blind for well over sixty years is up for debate.

Apparently, he was always known as a mischievous little boy who enjoyed pulling elaborate pranks on his friends and family.

American singer Dionne Warwick recalls a story from 1961 in which she performed at an international show in Paris, on a bill which also included girl group The Shirelles and a freshly-signed 11-year-old Little Stevie Wonder.

Dionne had been wearing one of her favourite red dresses on stage, but behind the scenes it seems that Little Stevie Wonder had a few concerns over her choice of clothing.

He approached Dionne and politely requested that she stop wearing the red dress for future performances.

When a puzzled Dionne Warwick pressed Stevie over why he was making such a strange request, he just shrugged and explained that he didn’t like the way it looked on her.

Several things were running through Dionne’s mind at this moment. For starters, why didn’t this cocky kid mind his own damn business? But more importantly, how could he see the red dress if he was supposed to be blind?

Dionne felt quite spooked out by the whole experience and briefly became convinced that Little Stevie Wonder wasn’t really blind after all.

It wasn’t until a little while later that she discovered The Shirelles had hated the red dress so much that they’d roped in Little Stevie Wonder to play a prank on the singer, and had told him exactly what to say.

It worked too, as Dionne Warwick never wore that red dress again. And she has revealed that this was only the first of many pranks that Stevie Wonder played on her over the years.

But taking into account his somewhat mischievous nature, could it be possible that the whole concept of Stevie Wonder being blind started off as a relatively harmless prank which spiralled out of control when he first hit the big time?

And could it be that he became permanently trapped within his own prank as he realised that he’d reached a point where it was far too late to come clean without being denounced as a fraudster?

God, I hope not. If this turns out to be true, I would advise Stevie Wonder to take a long, hard look at himself in the mirror.

The Writing’s on The Wall

Stevie Wonder has very rarely dipped his toe into the lucrative arena of product and brand endorsement, with a couple of notable exceptions being a 1974 print advertisement for the Mu-Tron III Envelope Filter – a kind of super-funky ‘guitar synthesiser’ effects pedal – and a 1985 TV commercial for Hansen’s Soda (“Some things in life are inspirational. Like the flavour of a Hansen’s Soda. Share a taste of life with me!”)

But the product endorsement most commonly associated with Stevie Wonder is one that he never actually made.

And before we move onto the evidence which suggests that he has been faking his blindness, I’d like to give Dave Page’s defence team an opportunity to ponder over how the creators of an online spoof of an old print advertisement might not have been quite as clever or funny as they imagined.

The product in question was for the legendary Atari 2600 Video Computer System, the king of the consoles back in the days when the most sophisticated experience you could have with a joystick was an intense session on Pacman or Space Invaders.

This particular promotion appears to have fooled a lot of people into believing that it was the real deal, and it regularly pops up in lists of quirky historical advertisements.

But a closer scrutiny of the text should have clearly indicated that Atari would never have signed off on such inappropriate wording, even back in the 1970s.

Stevie is quoted as saying “If I could play video games, you bet it would be Atari! My friends tell me the graphics are the best. I don’t know what that means, but I know with the Atari 2600 they must be uptight and outta sight!”

That doesn’t really work for me, as it seems to be implying that the graphics on an Atari 2600 are notable for being anxious and invisible.

The advert concludes with the words:

“With some system controllers, Stevie would be all thumbs. What use are numbers when you can’t see? That’s why Atari gives you easy-to-use joysticks and paddles. Even Stevie can fumble his way through a joystick.

Stevie likes to play alone even if he has no idea what’s happening. He says: ‘I love the sound of fun!’”

In fact, the advert was simply a retooling of the genuine print advertisement for the Mu-Tron III Envelope Filter.

But whilst there’s an obvious joke here about a visually impaired person possibly not being the ideal celebrity candidate to promote such a visual medium, could the creators of this spoof advertisement have made a slight oversight themselves?

I have no idea if Stevie Wonder has ever had a go on the Atari 2600 or any other console for that matter, but we do know that he has a long list of other hobbies, including photography and basketball.

He’s been frequently spotted whipping out a camera to take a spontaneous snap, often in the direction of the press photographers who were supposed to be taking a snap of him.

And there was a much-publicised moment at the Motown Museum in Detroit in 1996 when Stevie Wonder greeted Michael Jackson by immediately reaching for his camera and taking a photograph of The King of Pap. That wasn’t a typo, by the way.

I’m not sure how well the photograph came out. But this kind of thing has made The Wonder Truthers speculate on how a supposedly blind man goes about taking a good photograph, and what exactly he does with it afterwards.

The same Wonder Truthers are also deeply suspicious about Stevie’s passion for basketball.

He can be regularly spotted enjoying an expensive courtside seat at NBA games and cheering along in all the right places.

Former player and coach Darryl Dawkins went by the nickname of ‘Chocolate Thunder’ during his heyday, and he has since revealed that the nickname was first given to him by Stevie Wonder.

Admittedly, Darryl Dawkins does say a lot of weird things. He once claimed to be a visiting alien from the planet Lovetron, and he often popped back home off-season to see his girlfriend Juicy Lucy with whom he practised “interplanetary funkmanship”.

But it’s apparently true that the ‘Chocolate Thunder’ nickname came from Stevie Wonder, a man who has supposedly never even seen Darryl Dawkins in action.

So how much enjoyment can Stevie Wonder really get out of a courtside seat at a basketball game, and how can he possibly acquire the in-depth knowledge to start dishing out nicknames to the players?

On a slightly more prudent level, if he can’t see what’s going on, then what’s the point of him splashing out on an expensive courtside seat? It’s not as if it’s gonna give him a better view of the action, is it?

There’s one final point I’d like to put to Dave in this initial round of questioning, although this is more to satisfy my own curiosity than anything else.

Why does Stevie Wonder – and plenty of other blind people for that matter – wear shades?

When I was a very young kid, I was under the mistaken impression for a while that sunglasses were only ever worn by blind people. I was briefly convinced that Roy Orbison, Elton John, and Jeff Lynne from The Electric Light Orchestra were all blind.

But it’s kind of strange how an accessory which is meant to protect your eyes from the harmful effects of ultraviolet rays has become so synonymous with exactly the sort of people who surely don’t need to wear shades?

Dave’s View

Before we begin, I would just like to say what an honour and privilege it is to be invited here today. Many, many years ago, I stumbled across a little channel called “Business Blaze” and was blown away by the sheer talent displayed. I found Danny’s writing style to be both hilarious and captivating in equal measure. After watching every episode that had been published, I began to harbour dreams—I literally had dreams about it—of becoming a writer, although it would be some time before I would admit these dreams to myself, let alone anybody else.

Eventually, after a long, convoluted process, the details of which have been more than adequately documented in other videos, I got my big chance. Almost immediately, Danny was there for me. After I tentatively reached out to him through social media, he expertly mentored me through my first year working for Simon, even going as far as to proofread my scripts while at the same time offering helpful advice and constructive criticism in a way that portrayed absolutely no condescension of any kind—a trick which is very difficult to pull off.

When the time came and I was finally elevated to the lofty heights of “Brain Blaze writer,” quite literally a dream come true, Danny immediately made me feel welcome, both on the channel and in the basement.

I do not believe that it is an exaggeration to say that, without Danny, I would not have become a writer at all, nor would I have learned how to make the greatest mushroom toilet wine of all time. For these things, I am truly grateful.

Now that Danny’s arse has been well and truly filled with sunshine, I look forward to using a combination of logic, my experience as a blind person, and random stuff I find online to lay waste to any and all slanderous claims made against my man Steveland!

By the end of this video, viewers will be left in no doubt just exactly how blind he is. Allegedly, in my opinion.

Moving on, I would like to thank my learned friend for his opening points. Not because I believe they have any merit, but because I’m fairly sure that’s what you’re supposed to do in court.

Admittedly, my knowledge of court procedures is limited at best, and although I once served on a jury, the only thing I really remember from that week is being approached by the Clerk of the court, who told me that the judge would be far happier if I did not spend my time in the jury box rolling cigarettes for later consumption.

I will, if I may, start with the last point that was raised because, although I believe the prosecution may have included it as a somewhat light-hearted afterthought, it is a question that even I, a blind person who hardly ever wears sunglasses, get asked on a regular basis.

The reasons that a lot of blind people wear sunglasses are largely twofold:

1) Being self-conscious.

Although I am personally fortunate enough to have a visual condition that doesn’t really affect the appearance of my eyes—although this in and of itself can present problems from time to time—many others are not so fortunate. Lots of visual conditions, such as the one with which the great Mr. Wonder is afflicted, are very noticeable indeed. Given that the trappings of blindness naturally draw extra attention to you—bumping into things, falling downstairs, talking to people who left several minutes ago etc—many people simply choose to conceal this extra “abnormality.”

2) Light can be really painful.

I have been told by my sighted inferiors that travelling from a dark environment to a well-lit one can be painful. For many of us who have limited or no sight, even the slightest increase in light levels can trigger debilitating headaches or migraines. Therefore, many people in the visually impaired community simply choose to wear eye protection at all times to prevent unwanted surprises.

Personally, I am in a slightly difficult situation with regard to this. Although walking out of the house on a bright day can render me almost paralyzed with agony, wearing sunglasses greatly decreases the small amount of light perception that I do have, so I tend to just suck it up.

Now, if I may, I’d like to touch briefly on the mention of Atari endorsement. Although my learned friend succinctly debunked this particular piece of hokum, I would like to point out just how far removed from reality the idea is. Unless you are into text-based adventure games, as I believe a few people in the world are, the very idea that a blind person might get any enjoyment from a mainstream gaming console that far in the past is, to put it bluntly, absurd!

Although it was technically possible to play a few early PC games as long as they had stereo audio, mainstream playability would not really be a thing until the release of the Nintendo Wii in 2006. Even then, it was only possible to play a few games, and you needed sighted assistance to navigate the menu system. For true independent gameplay, blind gamers would have to wait until mid-2015, when a software update for the Xbox One introduced Microsoft Narrator to the gaming world.

If people are quite happy going around believing this scam, then one wonders just what other nonsense they might believe about Steveland?

Now, let us move on to some things that actually contain at least a kernel of truth, starting with the great man’s hobbies and interests.

While I personally do not understand the fascination that certain blind people have with photography, there is no doubt that the “art form” is now blind-accessible and, to a certain extent, always has been.

Nowadays, of course, to take a reasonable photograph of what’s going on around you, all you need to do is take out your iPhone, open the camera app, and, assuming you are using VoiceOver, you will be given a live description of what is going on in the viewfinder (how many faces there are, whether these faces are centred, what’s in the background, etc.).

While capturing an award-winning snap would definitely have been more difficult in the ’70s, it certainly wasn’t impossible. If we take into account the fact that most of Stevie Wonder’s more notable photographs are of people, that the majority of photographs are primarily concerned with faces [apart from the ones on the website that Danny keeps sending me], and that faces usually make noise, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that, if you put in the practice and effort to learn how to use a specific model of camera, you could become a pretty sharp photographer through sound alone.

If we stick with photography for a moment, an interest in obtaining excellent photos is not a bad place to start when talking about sitting at the front during a basketball game. Even a fully sighted photographer would presumably find it easier to photograph “Chocolate Thunder” without having to shoot around members of the crowd constantly getting up to go to the bathroom, the bar, and then the bathroom again.

It doesn’t not make sense when it comes to staying relevant and talked about, either. Sure, almost everyone with ears has heard of Stevie Wonder, but if you, for example, had a new album coming out, would you sit in the back row of a basketball game? Or would you capitalise on the free press your album might get from you simply sitting at the front? I would like to enter into evidence the following hypothetical as an example:

A sports journalist for one of the big networks attends a basketball game. After avidly watching the game for 30 or 40 seconds, she or he quite understandably loses interest and starts looking around to see who else is in danger of succumbing to terminal boredom. There, front row centre, shouting and cheering and waving a camera, is none other than Stevie Wonder.

Although when it comes to the write-up, she or he remembers very little about the stultifying match, they do remember that Stevie Wonder was in the crowd and write about it. Perhaps they even go as far as to mention that his new album ‘Stevie Wonder - The Best’ is coming soon to a record store near you.

The only other reason I can think of for paying extra for an excellent seat is—and I know this is difficult to even consider with any degree of seriousness—he really likes basketball. I mean, games on TV usually seem to be fairly well-attended, and the crowd can’t be made up entirely of members of the press. Why not get as close to the action as you can? Stevie Wonder probably isn’t the richest musician out there, but I bet he’s not buying store-brand cereal. He can afford it, so why not do it?

Conversation Peace

After a brief recess down the pub, the prosecution would now like to suggest that you can’t keep a big secret all to yourself.

In a case like this, there’s bound to be at least a few other people in Stevie Wonder’s inner celebrity circle who have somehow become aware that the Motown star was faking his blindness whilst the rest of us were left in the dark.

And over the years, some of those in the know have taken it upon themselves to publicly ‘out’ Stevie Wonder as a sighted man.

Boy George was apparently one of the very first.

Back in 2005, the former Culture Club frontman was said to have shared an anecdote about a VIP party he attended during which Stevie Wonder suddenly came out of nowhere to enthusiastically greet him with a playful tackle which ended up with Stevie holding Boy George in a headlock.

Some of the earliest reports of this story missed the point about this being a friendly encounter and ran with the over-dramatic headline: “Stevie Wonder Strangles Boy George.”

But how could Stevie have been so confident in his abilities to single out Boy George in a packed-out party that he approached him with a playful tackle?

This could have ended up evolving into an embarrassing social faux pa if Stevie Wonder had accidentally ended up holding Aretha Franklin in a headlock.

American actor and gameshow host Anthony Anderson was also happy to put forward the theory that Stevie Wonder can see during a 2016 appearance on ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’.

Anthony recounted the time that he introduced Stevie on stage at a festival in Tobago.

According to Anthony:

“Stevie walks on stage, walks to me, looks me dead in my eyes, says ‘Anthony, get me to a piano’. I was like ‘Steve, well hell if you just walked to me, you could have walked to the piano!’ He caught himself and he had to play it off!”

Anthony also recalled the time that Stevie challenged him to a free-throw basketball contest which Stevie won convincingly.

Throughout the interview, Anthony kept reiterating: “Stevie can see, it’s just an act! I’m telling you, have him on the show. Put stuff in his way. I bet you he step over it.”

Former ESPN commentator Bomani Jones has banged on at length about how he believes Stevie Wonder is faking it, pointing out that he knows someone who once sold the singer no less than three high-end plasma TVS, and that he heard reports that Stevie once aggressively lobbied without success to appear on ‘Dancing with the Stars’.

And the 172-year-old Rolling Stone Keith Richards revealed something of interest in his autobiography.

He says: “I remember stories about Stevie when we were on tours in Europe with his great band. They’d say, ‘The motherfucker can see! We walk into a brand-new hotel, he picks up his key, heads straight for the elevator.’”

Other celebrities to have allegedly spilled the beans over the years include Chaka Khan, British singer and songwriter Marsha Ambrosius, and Lionel Richie who shared a startling encounter involving a car on ‘The Kelly Clarkson Show’ in 2019.

It seems that Stevie Wonder likes his cars, and it was once falsely claimed that Oprah Winfrey gifted him a Rolls Royce as a thank you for performing at her 50th birthday bash. Completely untrue, of course.

This reminds me of the infamous 2004 episode of ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ in which the legend of daytime TV surprised all 276 members of the audience by giving them all a free Pontiac G6 Sedan. The event was soured somewhat by the later revelation that each audience member – specifically screened beforehand in a bid to try and fill up the studio with poor people who couldn’t afford a car – was then landed with a bill of around $7,000 to cover federal and state income taxes on their new vehicles.

Still, the TV moment was great while it lasted as Oprah happily bounced around the studio whilst pointing at everyone and shrieking “You get a car! You get a car!”

You do wonder what she would have done if she’d come across a blind person in the audience, though.

“You get a car! You get a car! You…erm, maybe that’s not such a great idea. I wasn’t pointing at you anyway.”

But it’s possible that Oprah would have just given the car away regardless, as she has a track record of gifting cars to blind people.

That false story about gifting Stevie Wonder a Rolls Royce after he performed at her 50th birthday?

It wasn’t a Rolls Royce. It was a Mercedes-Maybach.

Oprah later revealed that Stevie had specifically requested the vehicle, but Oprah had advised caution against him actually driving it. Shortly after he received the expensive gift, Stevie messaged Oprah with a video of him cheerfully driving the vehicle.

It was probably a very different vehicle that Lionel Richie was invited to climb into with Stevie Wonder, as it transpires that Stevie has something of a collection of them.

Lionel had turned up to Stevie’s house to find him clearly buzzing about a new track that he’d just recorded and wanted Lionel to hear.

Stevie suggested that they go and listen to it together on the cassette player in his car parked on the driveway. Lionel was invited to sit on the passenger side whilst Stevie got in the driver’s side.

After Stevie had started up the car and shoved the cassette in the player, he then proceeded to turn his head around and slowly reverse the car down the driveway as if he was getting ready to take Lionel out for a jolly spin around the neighbourhood.

Lionel didn’t appreciate this turn of events and started screaming “Stevie! What are you doing??”

A chuckling Stevie stopped the car and said: “Ah, got you, didn’t I?”

It’s fair to say that you might not feel entirely comfortable being driven around town by a blind man, but Lionel didn’t seem convinced that this would have been the case.

He told Kelly Clarkson: “I’ve been spending my whole life with him thinking he can see. I know he can see!”

If Stevie really is blind, it’s a good job that nobody was wandering up the drive when he was reversing down it.

But then again, if he really is blind, what’s he doing with so many cars in the first place? And who taught him to drive? I’m hoping it wasn’t Ray Charles.

Our final celebrity testimony comes from NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal, more commonly known to you and I as Shaq. Here’s a man you wouldn’t want to accuse of lying. Not to his face anyway.

Shaq was co-hosting a 2022 episode of ‘Inside the NBA’ on TNT when he recalled an incident from a few years earlier when he and Stevie used to have rooms in the same hotel in Wiltshire Boulevard.

Shaq was alone in the elevator one morning when it stopped on the first floor, and Stevie Wonder wandered in. Shaq didn’t say a word and felt quite taken aback when Stevie reached out to press the elevator button before spinning around and greeting the NBA star with “What’s up, Shaq? How you doing, big dawg?”

Shaq was apparently left speechless as the elevator reached the next floor and Stevie breezily wandered back out again.

This circles back round to the Boy George story and raises the question of how on Earth Stevie Wonder could have recognised a fellow celebrity if he couldn’t see them.

One popular suggestion in this case is that even a blind person can see Shaq on account of him being so utterly enormous, but I’m not convinced that this theory would hold up in court.

And whilst silly conspiracy theories like this are often driven forward by clueless isolated individuals who have never even met their subject, it does seem odd in this case that so many high-profile names and genuine friends of Stevie Wonder seem happy to jump on the bandwagon and let the cat out of the bag.

Dave’s View

Once again, the rules of the court require me to thank my learned friend for his further input.

However, now that’s out of the way I can say “Dude! You call that evidence? I put it to the jury that this man has been smoking the good stuff that Rudy Giuliani smokes!”

So, where shall we begin?

Perhaps we should start with the defendant’s alleged actions at the alleged party provided by the alleged musician boy George.

Even if the story is true, and the evidence appears to be, shall we say, somewhat flaky, if you know anything at all about the hidden talents of the blind, the story is perfectly believable. Let’s break it down.

A man who, for all intents and purposes has been blind his entire life so has, you know, been navigating the world through touch and sound alone, arrives at a busy party. Whilst at that party, presumably after sinking a few adult beverages, he hears the voice of somebody he recognises and decides that it might be fun to greet them with a friendly tackle.

Even assuming that he is not with at least one other person he knows - for the record I am not suggesting that blind people can’t attend parties on their own, just that Stevie Wonder seems like an awesome dude and probably doesn’t have to - does the prosecution seriously expect us to believe that he would be incapable of navigating his way through a room of people, homing in on the recognised voice and executing his prank?

Please!

My hearing is pretty bad for a blind person, and even I can home in on the discreet whisper of someone who owes me money from the other side of a packed bar with a live band.

Let us now move onto the claims of Anthony Anderson,

A “famous person” I have never heard of talking shit about one that I have.

While it is perhaps a little unusual for a sighted person to lose a free throw basketball contest to a blind person, there are a couple of reasonable explanations.

Firstly, as we have previously mentioned, Stevie is a big fan of the game, and therefore it is not unreasonable to assume that he may have spent more time than the average blind person practising it. Assuming they had their competition on a standard basketball court, as long as he knew roughly where he was, let his sighted opponent go first, and his opponent didn’t miss, then Stevie would have immediately known where the hoop was and should have been able to adjust his throw accordingly.

The second, far more simple explanation is that Anthony Anderson is just really shit at basketball.

Before we move on, I would like to relay to the court a sports-related story that I once heard, which involves the defendant.

As the story goes, Stevie Wonder was at some sort of posh charity dinner along with a number of other obscenely rich celebrities. When everybody was finally seated, he quickly discovered that, sitting on his left-hand side, was golf legend and legend of sexual promiscuity, Tiger Woods.

Apparently, Stevie is really into golf as well as basketball, and he quickly struck up a conversation with the player who would, at that point in time, have been the greatest in the world. After exchanging the usual pleasantries, Stevie told Tiger that he was a pretty avid golfer himself and said that they should play against each other one day. Apparently, Tiger laughed this off and changed the subject, only to have his blind dinner companion return to it over and over again. Eventually, after reportedly becoming a little exasperated, Tiger said something along the lines of, “Fine.

When do you want to play?” to which Stevie replied, “Any night you like.”

If this story is true, then it’s fantastic. If it’s not true, then it’s a great joke. Far more acceptable than the only other Stevie Wonder joke I know, which, depending on what Simon thinks, you may or may not hear now.

“What’s black and loud? Stevie Wonder answering the iron.”

Anyway, apologies for the tangent—very unprofessional for a courtroom, I know. Where were we? Oh yes, Bomani Jones and the mystery of a blind person buying large televisions.

Believe it or not, when furnishing our houses, we don’t just consider ourselves. Some of us have friends who come and visit and, if we’re really lucky, we might even have families of our own. If any of these friends, family members, or other loved ones enjoy watching television, then we have been known to purchase these peculiar devices.

In addition to this incredibly altruistic reason, there is in fact a self-serving reason for a blind person to buy a massive television! Quite simply, the smaller the television, the smaller the internal speakers, and the smaller the internal speakers, the greater the inferiority of the sound.

As for whether or not he has lobbied, aggressively or otherwise, to appear on Dancing with the Stars, the comedian Chris McCausland (completely blind and with one of the most rude public relations people that I have ever had the misfortune of speaking with, allegedly, in my opinion)—will compete in ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ this year. So, it’s just possible they may have missed a trick.

Let us move on to the words of Keith Richards.

In other circumstances, his testimony could potentially shed an interesting light on the behaviour of the defendant, but, the defence moves that, due to his absurdly advanced age and the fact that he is, or certainly was, a self-confessed drug addict and alcoholic, two occupations that have been irrefutably proven to mess with memories, his testimony should be discounted and the jury instructed to forget about it during their final deliberations.

Having said that, the jury could still perhaps take into account Keith’s subsequent explanation for how Stevie Wonder was able to navigate his way around a new hotel with ease, which can be found in the very same memoir.

He writes:

“I found out later that he’d memorised the plan of a Four Seasons Hotel. Five steps up here, two steps to the elevator… It was no big deal to him.”

Whilst we also considered asking the jury to disregard any evidence submitted by Oprah Winfrey simply on the grounds that any testimony she provided would probably be very muffled and difficult to understand due to her constantly fellating Prince Harry, the fact that accusations of competent driving have been made by several other witnesses compelled us to provide counter arguments.

So, let’s go.

Contrary to popular belief—and I had a rather heated argument about this recently in the Brain Blaze comments section—it is indeed possible for a blind person to learn how to drive. Obviously, if you were born fully sighted, learned how to drive, and then lost your sight later, then you are at an advantage here. However, this particular scenario applies neither to myself nor the defendant.

Personally, I don’t understand why sighted people find this so hard to believe. Perhaps, and I am merely speculating here, it is simply due to the fact that passing one’s driving test has become a rite of passage in the Western world. Given that a lot of people don’t manage to do it the first time, the idea that somebody could control a motor vehicle without being able to see is too much to comprehend.

Obviously, I am overlooking a few fundamentals here. Clearly, there is a difference between possessing the physical ability to drive a car and being able to do so safely on a public highway. However, assuming you have been fortunate enough to collect a few slightly reckless friends over the years, and you have access to some private, or at least very quiet, land, then driving a car, a motorcycle, a van, a truck, or even various farming vehicles is pretty easy to pull off.

Taking a quick read back through the testimony of my learned friend—a luxury I have as it was submitted to me in advance—all the instances he mentioned appear to have taken place on private land, with at least one of them being on the actual driveway of the defendant. Presumably, given that he appears to enjoy scaring the shit out of people with his driving talents, it would not have been the first time that he reversed down his own driveway. If we take this as a given, then it rather easily explains how he was able to do so with such confidence.

Honestly, as somebody who is fortunate enough to have just such a reckless friend and, as a result, was able to drive up to the venue of the biggest gig in my admittedly short music career on a Harley Davidson, I really don’t know what all the fuss is about.

Now, I suppose we must address the elephant in the room. Or, to put it more accurately, the mammoth NBA star in the elevator. I must admit that I do not have a concrete explanation for exactly how the defendant was able to correctly identify Shaq, but I do, I believe, have a plausible theory.

Firstly, from what I was able to gather from the interview, both the basketball legend and the musical giant had been staying in the same hotel for some time, so it stands to reason that Stevie would have known he was there. Secondly, even in an open space, it is possible to tell whether or not somebody is standing close to you, purely by the way that their physical presence changes the ambient sound of the world around you. If you happen to be in a familiar room, then this sensation is greatly amplified, and you can usually glean at least some information about the person’s physical characteristics—size, height, etc.

Now, if we scale down the environment even more, say to the size of an elevator car—an elevator car used by the defendant on a daily basis—then when Stevie entered, he would’ve been fully aware that there was an unusually huge individual sharing that elevator car with him. It’s quite probable that he just put two and two together and gambled. After all, if he got it wrong and it was just some random huge dude, even if that dude later went on to tell all their friends, the story isn’t exactly gonna go viral, is it?

There is one other thing that may have played a part in giving him away. Most people are creatures of habit, and part of this involves doing things like wearing the same aftershave or deodorant most of the time. Assuming Stevie Wonder had met Shaq on previous occasions, he may have had a “signature scent” to add to his pre-gamble checklist. All of my blind friends know when I am coming, because the scent of Rotting Turtle is unmistakable. Apparently, the aftershave of the same name is pretty distinctive also.

Well, I believe that covers everything so far. What else you got?

I’m Afraid the Masquerade is Over

Perhaps it’s time to bring out the big guns for our final presentation.

So much for the word of a few celebrities. How about some hard video evidence which clearly shows Stevie Wonder slipping up in public?

And if you’re gonna slip up in public, then the White House is as good a place as any in which to do it.

Back in 2010, Paul McCartney put on a big performance at The White House East Room after President Obama awarded him ‘The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song’ in recognition of his lifetime contribution to popular music.

The previous recipient had been none other than Stevie Wonder who now joined Paul McCartney on stage to honour the occasion, along with a star-studded cast of other accompanying artists including Herbie Hancock, Elvis Costello, Faith Hill, Dave Grohl, and for reasons that I can’t quite fathom, Jerry Seinfeld.

Right towards the grand climax of the performance as every artist is on stage for a rendition of ‘Hey Jude’, Paul McCartney experiences a slightly clumsy moment as he quickly tries to dash back behind his piano.

He runs right in front of Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock, brushing past a tall microphone which then starts to tumble in the direction of Stevie Wonder. Oblivious to the fact that he’s just sent a microphone flying in the direction of a blind man, McCartney gets comfy behind the piano as if nothing has happened.

That’s just typical of the Paul McCartney impersonator. The real Paul McCartney who died in 1966 would have noticed what was going on.

But there’s no need to panic. Stevie Wonder’s got this.

The footage appears to show Stevie instinctively reaching out his arm to successfully catch the falling microphone.

Almost immediately afterwards, he then grins and appears to give a cheeky nudge to Herbie Hancock standing right next to him, as if to say “Phew! Nearly dropped a massive clanger there, but I don’t think anyone noticed!”

So how exactly can the defence even attempt to argue against video evidence viewed by millions which clearly shows that Stevie Wonder got caught out here?

Whilst we’re at it, here’s a final piece of testimony from somebody who knew Stevie Wonder better than most.

Ms Mbappe apparently dated Stevie Wonder for quite a while back in the 1970s. And during a 2017 interview on the African radio station Enquêteur Africain, she expressed her disbelief over how he’d managed to get away with faking it so long.

According to Ms Mbappe:

“All the big names had a gimmick back then. Stevie was the genius in glasses who couldn’t see a thing. But he was forced to stick with it and live the rest of his life as a pretend blind man.

Have you seen him sitting front row at basketball games? He loves basketball.

Have you seen him taking photographs? He is an amazing photographer. He shows these photos to house guests and they still don’t get it! He can see! People are so gullible it’s truly phenomenal.”

When listeners began phoning in to complain about the tone of the interview and suggest that Ms Mbappe was just trying to destroy her former lover’s reputation, she only doubled down in response:

“Oh come on! I can’t believe he’s gotten away with this for so long. Anyone who has known a real blind guy can see that Stevie isn’t blind.”

So there we have it. Publicly exposed by a former lover, and caught out on camera.

Surely Dave can’t possibly ignore the evidence of his own eyes?

Oh hang on, I see a problem here…

Dave’s View

Well, well, well.

So it comes down to this.

Not able to provide a convincing argument in the conventional manner, the prosecution stoops so low as to introduce video evidence in an argument against a blind defence attorney.

I was only joking about the Rudy Giuliani thing earlier, but now I’m not so sure.

Handicapped as I have been by this curveball—a curveball which, I might add, had no bell or lead shot inside so that I might determine its whereabouts—I shall endeavour to explain exactly how a blind musician could possibly have caught a falling microphone.

As I mentioned earlier, I have been privileged enough to perform on stage numerous times. Sadly, I can’t sing or play the guitar, so I had to make do with playing drums. Never mind, at least I wasn’t a bass player.

As any of you watching who have played on stage can attest, the feeling is like nothing else. That unique blend of nervousness, adrenaline, and other, usually man-made chemicals heightens your senses, sharpens your reflexes, and generally makes you feel like you are king, or queen, of the world.

If you bear this in mind and combine it with the strange audio effect I described earlier, caused by one’s proximity to people or objects, the idea that a blind person might be aware of and able to catch a falling microphone stand is, to put it bluntly, mundane. Even if we largely discount on-stage Jedi syndrome, if somebody bangs into a microphone, then everybody on stage will be treated to a rather distinctive thudding noise through the monitors. Given that Stevie Wonder has spent more time on stage than most people, he certainly would have been able to combine this noise with the other information he received through different senses.

If that wasn’t explanation enough, I would like to submit to the court the following piece of evidence.

During my research, I came across the following document, which quite conclusively proves that the prosecution has very little faith in the video evidence.

Here is that document:

“One final point to bear in mind is that the footage may have been completely misinterpreted anyway.

After scrutinising the footage for at least several seconds, it’s not crystal clear what happened immediately after Paul McCartney knocked over the microphone, a situation not helped by the fact that the camera isn’t pointing in quite the right place and the end credits have started to roll.

But it could very easily be argued that Herbie Hancock was the first to reach out and actually grab the microphone. While Stevie Wonder does appear to stretch his arm out in broadly the same direction, it could be that he sensed that someone was approaching him and was simply reaching out to touch or even high-five the individual, but got left hanging by McCartney, who was in too much of a rush to get to the piano.”

At this point, you may well be thinking something along the lines of “So what? Why does this random extract prove anything?”

Ordinarily, I would be happy to agree that it doesn’t. However, there is one significant piece of information that was lost during the copy and paste process. This particular document was written in a font called “Berkelium 64,” which, as I’m sure you will all be aware, is the font used on the Commodore 64.

Who, we must ask ourselves, is famous if not notorious for using such an outdated piece of hardware? That’s right! The leader of the prosecution, Danny Salter himself!

As for the mythical Ms. Mbappe, a person so elusive that the internet doesn’t even seem to know her first name, if we have now reached the point where we can submit angry, unverified ramblings from disgruntled ex-partners as evidence, then the UK judicial system is in a far worse state than even I could believe.

I mean, my friend Swarly told everybody that his girlfriend broke up with him because his penis was too large, when in actual fact it was because she found his stack of man-on-man pornography. People get bitter about breakups and make up all sorts of stuff.

You certainly can’t, as one group of “Truthers” seems to have, base an entire conspiracy theory on such things.

Before I hand back to Danny to bring this script to a close, I would just like to say that, believe it or not, I went through a phase where I did not believe that Stevie Wonder was blind or at least not as blind as he made out. Any lingering doubts I may have had were finally put to rest during the creation of these arguments. Remember, boys and girls, just because people can do things you can’t explain, it doesn’t mean that they are necessarily up to no good.

Finally, Stevie, if you’re watching this and it ever comes to light that you were lying, I will personally hunt you down and run you over. I’ll get away with it too; they all think I’m blind as well.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Rewinding all the way back to the impromptu interview at Los Angeles International Airport in 2017, you may remember that Stevie Wonder rounded off the interview by declaring that he would finally be “revealing the truth” later that year.

Well, it seems that Stevie himself forgot, as no further revelations were forthcoming in 2017.

The interesting point here is that the TMZ interviewer appeared to assume that Stevie was just mucking about when he claimed that he’d already flown and landed a couple of planes, prompting the interviewer to follow this up by asking Stevie if he was ever going to come out as a sighted guy.

But it seems that Stevie Wonder may have been partly serious.

The former Ghanaian president Jerry Rawlings – himself a military jet pilot - has made a quite bizarre claim that he once handed over the controls of a small private 13-seater plane to Stevie Wonder who then proceeded to land the plane safely under the former president’s close guidance.

The whole thing was apparently recorded by a French TV crew who were on board at the time, but Stevie requested that the footage should never be shown as people might not believe that he was truly blind.

I suspect that Jerry Rawlings may be having us on here, as he’s very vague about when this was supposed to have happened.

But it’s true that Stevie Wonder has indeed taken the controls of a couple of planes, albeit for a tiny window of time under the very strict supervision of a licensed pilot.

And this was probably what he was alluding to when the TMZ reporter thought he was just fooling around.

However, Stevie was definitely just having a laugh when he declared that he would be revealing the whole truth later that year.

And it seems that quite a lot of this conspiracy theory is simply a case of some people – including his good friends - just enjoying a good chuckle, and I suspect that Stevie himself may often be in on the joke.

The theory appeared to take off for the first time back in 2005 when the anecdote of Boy George getting tackled and held in a headlock by Stevie Wonder first appeared online.

Whilst all the other tongue-in-cheek anecdotes we’ve covered from the likes of Shaq and Lionel Richie were very much made in public by the stars themselves, this early anecdote involving Boy George looks as if it was completely made up by some guy posting in a forum.

And it was from this fictional anecdote that the theory grew over the years as people began to search for more clues which may indicate that Stevie Wonder’s blindness may itself be a work of fiction.

Of course, the whole concept is fundamentally preposterous.

You would first have to ask yourself the point of it all.

Whilst some have argued that it could have been a crafty marketing gimmick, you have to remember that Stevie Wonder didn’t need a gimmick.

At the age of eleven, he was already a gifted child prodigy who went on to become one of the most talented musicians in history. Pretending to be blind wouldn’t have made much of a difference to anything in the grand scheme of things.

And it would also have required a monumental effort bordering on the impossible.

Just trying to fake blindness in a convincing manner for a whole day would be fiendishly tricky, but imagine trying to keep it up every day for over sixty years.

Considering his position in the public spotlight, Stevie would likely have dropped the ball literally hundreds and hundreds of times if he was faking it.

According to his own memoir, Steveland Hardaway Judkins wasn’t technically born blind but he did lose his sight before he’d left the hospital.

He was born six weeks premature and placed into an incubator to give his organs an opportunity to develop – but unfortunately he was given too much oxygen which led to him developing Retinopathy of Prematurity – an eye disorder caused by abnormal blood vessels in the retina which effectively detaches the retina from the eyes.

This sadly wasn’t an isolated case during the early days of effective incubators, and there was a spike of premature blind babies in the 1940s and ’50s.

Of course, Stevie Wonder’s medical records are a private matter and none of our damn business, so it’s not as if we have access to concrete proof that Stevie Wonder is blind.

It’s possible that he may have slightly more vision than some people imagine. Whilst it’s often assumed that blind people live in a world of complete darkness, the overwhelming majority of legally blind people can still perceive light and still maintain at least some level of vision. But it’s blatantly obvious that Stevie Wonder would struggle with the eyesight section of a driving test.

And taking into account the specific cause of his blindness in which his retinas became detached, it’s likely that Stevie is indeed totally blind and living in a world of complete darkness. Or complete light, depending on how you look at it.

Perhaps the closest thing we have to proof is the photographic evidence of the rare occasions on which Stevie removes his shades.

A memorable moment occurred during his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989 when he took off his sunglasses during his acceptance speech.

This action took a lot of people by surprise, as if it was the first time that Stevie Wonder had ever removed his sunglasses in public. Or maybe some people just assumed that he was born with the shades attached.

But it’s not quite the only time that he’s taken them off in public. He dropped the shades during a brief period in 1979 and can be seen without them throughout the whole of the music video for ‘The Secret Life of Plants’.

And it’s visibly obvious that underneath those shades, Stevie Wonder’s eyes are very badly damaged.

The reasons why a conspiracy theory like this has managed to endure for quite so long may be considered faintly depressing.

Yes, some people just like to cling to the idea that we live in a world of bare-faced lies and massive deception where you can’t trust anyone to tell the truth.

But there may also be an unpleasant element of questioning the disability of anyone who proves to have a spectacular talent.

The idea here seems to be that a blind person can’t possibly be capable of writing, recording, and performing incredible music, despite the obvious fact that you clearly don’t need eyesight to write, record, and perform incredible music.

And the wider concept seems to suggest that anyone with a disability who happens to excel at something must be exaggerating their disability.

I would imagine that people who think along these lines probably didn’t tune into the Paralympics in Paris this year.

But as my learned friend Dave Page has been able to illustrate throughout this case, the truth is plain for all to see:

Stevie Wonder is a musical genius who just happens to be blind.

Not only that, but I reckon that Stevie Wonder would whoop my ass in a free-throw basketball contest.

I still fancy my chances in a Pacman contest, though.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did Stevie Wonder say in the 2017 interview that sparked the conspiracy theory?

Stevie Wonder said he had flown and landed a couple of planes and hinted that he would reveal the whole truth later that year.

What is the main conspiracy theory surrounding Stevie Wonder?

The conspiracy theory suggests that Stevie Wonder has been pretending to be blind since he released his first record in 1962.

Who are some of the celebrities that have allegedly spilled the beans about Stevie Wonder’s supposed ability to see?

Celebrities like Boy George, Anthony Anderson, Bomani Jones, Keith Richards, Chaka Khan, Marsha Ambrosius, Lionel Richie, and Shaquille O’Neal have shared anecdotes suggesting Stevie Wonder can see.

What is the significance of Stevie Wonder’s performance at The White House in 2010?

During the performance, Stevie Wonder appeared to catch a falling microphone, which some people interpreted as evidence that he can see.

What is the explanation for Stevie Wonder’s ability to catch the falling microphone?

The defense argues that Stevie Wonder’s heightened senses and experience on stage allowed him to catch the microphone without seeing it.

What did Stevie Wonder’s mother Lulu Mae Hardaway believe about his blindness?

Lulu Mae Hardaway believed that Stevie’s blindness might have been a part of God’s vengeance for some sin she had unwittingly committed.

How did Stevie Wonder’s career take off?

Stevie Wonder’s career took off when he was signed by Motown Records at the age of 11 and released the live rendition of ‘Fingertips’ in 1963, which topped the US singles charts.

What is the cause of Stevie Wonder’s blindness?

Stevie Wonder’s blindness is caused by Retinopathy of Prematurity, an eye disorder resulting from abnormal blood vessels in the retina, which detaches the retina from the eyes.

What is the significance of Stevie Wonder’s photographic evidence?

Photographic evidence shows Stevie Wonder without his sunglasses, revealing badly damaged eyes, which supports the claim that he is indeed blind.

What is the defense’s argument against the conspiracy theory?

The defense argues that Stevie Wonder’s actions and abilities can be explained by his heightened senses, experience, and the use of other senses to navigate his environment.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: The Rather Insane ‘Stevie Wonder is Not Blind’ Conspiracy
• Hero image source by Yeuxpapilon / openverse, by-sa.