B-side "Tuesday Heartbreak" Format 7" 45 RPM Genre Soul
pop | Released March 1973 Recorded 1972 Length 2:58 | |
"You Are the Sunshine of My Life" is a 1973 single released by Stevie Wonder. The song became Wonder's third number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and his first number-one on the Easy Listening chart. It won Wonder a Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, and was nominated for both Record of the Year and Song of the Year. This song was the second single released from the 1972 album entitled Talking Book, which stayed at number one on the R&B charts for three weeks. The song opened 194 Radio City on 21 October 1974.
Rolling Stone ranked the song #281 on their list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
The first two lines of the song are sung, not by Wonder, but by Jim Gilstrap; Lani Groves sings the next two. The single version of the song differs from the album version with the addition of horns to the mix.
In popular culture
The song was used in the ABC sitcom Taxi in the season 5 episode "Jim's Inheritance". A tape was left by Jim Ignatowski's late father to remind him that he was his favorite of his three children. It was performed by Chris Colfer as his character Kurt Hummel in the episode "Wonder-ful", the 21st episode of Glee (fourth season), in 2013. In 2016, Jack White performed an alternative rock version the song with The Muppets for the series finale of The Muppets.