Grammy Best R&B Vocal Performance – As (1986)

Lore & Background

By the mid-1980s, Stevie Wonder had already cemented his reputation as one of the most accomplished multi-instrumentalists and melodic architects in popular music. *Book of Love* (1985) represented a deliberate shift: a softer, more introspective record that leaned on his voice and his words rather than the layered production that had defined his earlier masterpieces. "As" sits at the emotional core of that album, a piece in which he simply speaks—no chorus, no bridge, no arrangement to hide behind—about what it means to be open with another person, to say the small and large things that love requires.

The Grammy community's decision to crown a spoken-word monologue with a vocal performance award was a quiet revolution. It signaled that the Academy recognized emotional truth and vocal presence as legitimate artistic criteria, not just technical vocal acrobatics. For a fanbase that had grown up watching him play seventeen instruments on a single track, hearing him stripped down to nothing but his voice and his words was its own kind of spectacle.

In the broader Stevie Wonder canon, "As" occupies a special place alongside his most famous love songs. Where tracks like "I Wish" or "Superstition" build grand emotional cathedrals through melody and groove, "As" is a candlelit conversation. It is the Stevie Wonder who sits across from you at a kitchen table, and that intimacy is precisely what the Grammy committee was celebrating.

In Their Own Story

The dressing room still smelled of cologne and warm amplifier dust. Stevie sat on the edge of the vanity, a tangle of cables pooled at his feet like shed snakes, and ran a thumb over the small gold gramophone in his palm. The ceremony had been two hours ago; the lights had been blinding, the applause a warm tide. But what kept coming back to him wasn't the moment he'd walked onstage. It was the moment before—when he'd closed his eyes, felt the microphone's faint hum against his lips, and simply *said* the words. No key change. No drum fill. Just a man talking about love the way he'd talk about it at two in the morning, half-asleep, certain the other person was listening. He turned the gramophone over, catching the stage light in its little pedestal, and smiled at the way it looked almost like a tiny, perfect record player. He set it on the vanity beside his guitar case and whispered, "Thank you," to no one in particular. Then he picked up his harmonica and started to play, softly, for the empty room.

Reader's Guide

At the 28th Annual Grammy Awards in 1986, Stevie Wonder received the award for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male for "As," the spoken-word centerpiece of his 1985 album *Book of Love*.

The win mattered because it validated a dimension of his artistry that his most famous hits never fully showcased: the power of his unadorned voice and his words. In a year when R&B vocal categories were dominated by polished, belt-driven performances, a gentle monologue about emotional vulnerability stood out as a radical act of trust in the listener. It told the industry and the public that Stevie Wonder was not merely a prodigy who could play every instrument in the studio, but a songwriter whose most devastating instrument was his own unguarded speech.

For fans, the award confirmed what they had always felt: that the quietest Stevie track was often the loudest. It positioned him alongside peers who built empires on vocal fireworks and reminded them that he could outfeel every one of them with nothing but a microphone and a sentence. In the Stevie Wonder universe, "As" is the track you play when the house is quiet and you need to remember that love is not a performance. It is a conversation. And sometimes a conversation is enough to win the world.

Did You Know?

• "As" is not a traditional song at all—it is a spoken-word monologue with no conventional verse-chorus structure, making its win in a *vocal performance* category a quiet statement that emotional delivery counts as perfor
• The track appears on *Book of Love*, an album widely regarded as one of Stevie Wonder's most intimate and personal records, a deliberate departure from the grander productions of his early-1980s work.
• Stevie Wonder is known for playing virtually every instrument on his own recordings; on "As," he largely forgoes that practice, letting his spoken voice carry the entire piece with minimal or no instrumental backing.
• The 28th Grammy ceremony in 1986 was one of the many times Stevie Wonder stood in a room full of industry peers as both the most celebrated and the most quietly subversive artist present.