Babyface

Edmonds traces his songwriting instinct to an almost helpless romanticism — "I fell in love almost every day," he told Essence — and names the exact soundtrack for it. "When I was falling in love with love, I was also falling in love with melody," he said. "Stevie Wonder's melodies, the Beatles' melodies — any pretty melody might move me. Melodies spoke to me about the state of my own heart." Decades later Wonder became a real collaborator, co-writing and singing on Babyface's own "How Come, How Long" — proof the boyhood devotion never faded.

listen: upstream & heresource: Encyclopedia.com — Contemporary Musicians ↗share

1985

OverjoyedStevie Wonder

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1989

Whip AppealBabyface

listen forStevie Wonder's 1985 "Overjoyed" hangs a falsetto vocal over slow-moving, harmonically dense chords, the melody arriving a half-beat behind where you expect it. Babyface's "Whip Appeal" (1989) borrows that exact architecture: hushed high register, unhurried phrasing, chords that keep resolving somewhere unexpected instead of home. Listen for how both singers let the harmony do the emotional work while the voice stays almost conversational — the "waterfall" softness critics needled Babyface for, traced straight to its source.

No influence runs deeper than Earth, Wind & Fire. As a teenager in Manchild, Edmonds and his bandmates learned the group's catalog note-for-note before EW&F had crossed over nationally — "we take their whole routines and do it," he told the podcast Broken Record, so faithfully that a friend who caught a rival group live called panicked, warning them the group had "stole all of your songs and stole your whole act." Edmonds even talked his way backstage by posing as a reporter to interview bandleader Maurice White. "I lied and said I was a news reporter and got in to meet him," he said.

listen: upstream & heresource: Broken Record podcast — Babyface episode (Earth, Wind & Fire and Smokey Robinson quotes) ↗share

1974

Mighty MightyEarth, Wind & Fire

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1977

Funky SituationBabyface

listen forEarth, Wind & Fire's "Mighty Mighty" (1974) drives on syncopated horns, chattering rhythm guitar, and stacked group vocals shouting a hook. Manchild's "Funky Situation" (1977) — the teenage Edmonds's first recorded lead vocal — chases that same horn-punched groove, filtered through the jazz fusion he was also absorbing. "I hear all those influences of — from Earth Wind and Fire to Return to Forever to Stevie Wonder, and it's all mixed," he said of the track, naming the exact debt this pairing makes audible.

Where Wonder and Earth, Wind & Fire shaped his ear, Smokey Robinson shaped his pen. Edmonds singles him out specifically as a lyricist: "[You] forget how Smokey was amazing," he told Broken Record, "he just did it so natural that I think that's [why] we forget, because it was like a conversation for him... he clearly was a huge inspiration in that way." No cover or sample documents the debt — it's a craft lesson in plain speech, one Edmonds absorbed and applied to his own writing for himself and others.

listen: upstream & heresource: Broken Record podcast — Babyface episode (Earth, Wind & Fire and Smokey Robinson quotes) ↗share

1965

The Tracks of My TearsSmokey Robinson

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1993

When Can I See YouBabyface

listen forRobinson's "The Tracks of My Tears" (1965) sells its heartbreak in plain, everyday language over a light, guitar-forward arrangement — nothing ornate, just a voice talking straight to you. Babyface's "When Can I See You" (1993), his own breakthrough as a singer, works the same way: an unguarded, conversational lyric over spare accompaniment. No documented cover or sample links the two — the connection is Edmonds's own praise of Robinson's naturalness, audible here as restraint rather than quotation.