“I Was Made to Love Her” is a song recorded by American musician Stevie Wonder for Motown’s Tamla label in 1967. The song was written by Wonder, his mother This tune was written by Wonder, who was 16 at the time, together with his mother Lula Mae Hardaway, Motown songwriter Sylvia Moy, and the song’s producer Henry Cosby. Wonder’s mother co-wrote many of Wonder’s songs during her son’s teenage years. She was nominated for the 1970 Grammy Award for Best R&B Song for co-penning “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours.”
Wonder told the Rock Around The World newspaper that this song, “kind of speaks of my first love to a girl named Angie, who was a very beautiful woman.” He added: “Actually, she was my third girlfriend but my first love. I used to call Angie up and, like, we would talk and say, ‘I love you, I love you,’ and we’d talk and we’d both go to sleep on the phone. And this was like from Detroit to California, right? You know, mother said, ‘Boy, what you doing – get off the phone!’ Boy, I tell you, it was ridiculous.”
Sylvia Moy, who is in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, also worked on Wonder’s songs “Uptight” and “My Cherie Amour.” She says that her inspiration for “I Was Made To Love Her” was stories she heard from her parents – her mother is from Arkansas, which is why Stevie opens the song singing, “I was born in Little Rock.” After his initial success as “Little” Stevie Wonder, he stopped playing harmonica on most of his songs to help shed the image. On this track, Wonder’s harmonica came back strong.
The stunning vocal on this song took some work. Producer Henry Cosby coaxed it out of Wonder by taking him to a Baptist church in Detroit and having Stevie imitate the preacher. The next step was finding Wonder his congregation. “Stevie wanted people in the studio. He had to feel the presence of people,” said Cosby. “If there were none around, his vocal was just dead. I had to go outside and just stop people who were passing to bring them in, so Stevie could feel their presence. Once we got that, he could fire into that feeling.”
Released as a single, “I Was Made to Love Her” peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard chart in July 1967. The song was held out of the top spot by “Light My Fire” by the Doors and spent four non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Hot Rhythm and Blues Singles chart in the United States. The song reached No. 5 the Top Twenty, maing it Wonder’s first top ten hit in the UK.
When asked in a 1968 interview which of his songs stood out in his mind, Wonder answered “‘I Was Made to Love Her’ because it’s a true song”. The last lyric line “You know Stevie ain’t gonna leave her” was ad libbed by Wonder.
Among the artists to cover this song have been The Beach Boys on their 1967 album Wild Honey, Jimi Hendrix (with Wonder on drums) on the BBC Sessions album and Boyz II Men on their 2007 covers album, Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA. Also Whitney Houston made a recording with minor changes, titled “I Was Made To Love Him” on her 1998 album My Love Is Your Love.
