B-side "Seems So Long" Genre Funk Writer(s) Stevie Wonder | Released November 1974 Label Tamla | |
Length 4:55 (Album version)
4:05 (1974 single)
5:14 (1999 version) | ||
"Boogie On Reggae Woman" is a 1974 funk single by American Motown artist Stevie Wonder, from his album Fulfillingness' First Finale. Despite the song's title, its style is firmly funk/R&B and neither boogie nor reggae. It continued Wonder's successful Top Ten streak on the pop charts, reaching number three and also spent two weeks at number one on the soul charts. Billboard ranked it as the No. 25 song for 1975. It featured Wonder's distinctive harmonica, although not his usual chromatic type but instead a diatonic A-flat "blues harp". The song is also notable for Wonder's pulsating Moog synthesizer bassline. The lyrics are designed as a dialogue between "nice" and "naughty" intent, including the introduction to his harmonica break, which incorporates Wonder's casual but repeated question "Can I play?"
Following conclusion of the vocal, the harmonica is reprised for the remaining seventy seconds, and concluding thirty bars of the tune, to the fade.
Writing for AllMusic, Ed Hogan said, "'Boogie on Reggae Woman' was light and bouncy, strutting along on a funky, percolating pulse. Johnny Nash's 1972 number one pop gold single 'I Can See Clearly Now' had primed the mainstream audience for the reggae sound that Wonder employed on the cut."