Ethan Hein on Stevie Wonder's "Don't You Worry `Bout A Thing" a couple of thoughts on harmonic language and contrapuntal variation in the song

So Ethan Hein has written about another Stevie Wonder song and while I don’t have a lot I am going to write I can’t not write about this masterpiece of a song, seeing as this year is the 50^th anniversary of the release of Innervisions and this song is on that album. First, go read Ethan Hein’s post:
https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2023/dont-you-worry-bout-a-thing/

Now, I’ve got a few thoughts about two things that make this song great, the harmonic vocabulary and Wonder’s gift for contrapuntal writing.  You didn’t misread that last part but I’ll get to that later.  First …
Let’s look at the line cliché Ethan Hein pointed out kicks off the song and the chord changes in the start of the first verse, which Ethan Hein mapped out in chord names.  I’m going to add Roman numeral break-downs
Em    B7   Em(D)  A7(C#)  Dm7    G9    CM7    B7/F9
i       V6    i4       IV6        vii7     III     VIIM7  V7/bII9
                 2   
 
In a way it's easier to see in the chord names what goes on in the first eight bars of the first verse. We get a line cliche introduction, as Ethan Hein pointed out, in the introduction. In the verse, though, the line cliche gets fleshed out with harmony, which I've outlined tersely in Roman numeral convention. What we see from the A7 through to the C is a chain of fourths.  A goes to D goes to G goes to C which either goes to B or sometimes to F, which, for those who know your root movements in harmonic theory, signals an extension of the chain of fourths. 
 
The surprise in the jump from the end of the verse to the chorus is that the jump from F major 9 to G is a mixolydian subtonic to tonic shift that catches us off guard because that opening line progression cliche has primed us to keep thinking in forms of harmonic minor or minor.  But the D minor 7th chord subtly yet not subtly introduced the Neapolitan tone as a portent of modal mutations to come. By the time Wonder has cycled through G9, C major 7th and F major 9th before getting to the G major of the chorus he's modally destabilized the line progression enough that he can make the harmonic/modal jump into relative major from what amounts to a Neapolitan substitution for the iv in the minor key without us feeling that, however surprising the move is, that the modulation makes no sense.  That D minor chord overtly breaks what would have otherwise been another musical cliche known as the chain of fourths or a set of circle progressions.  Having given us the line cliche to start with, Wonder subverts the potential second cliche via modal mutation. That F in the D minor chord is what foreshadows all sorts of chromatic games he plays in the bridge.  .
 
Because this is Stevie Wonder and not James Brown there's no "Take me to the bridge!" signal. Instead the bridge shows what Wonder can do with the chromatic line cliche that nobody else would've thought of doing in a song.  Ethan Hein has explained it so succinctly I can't improve upon what he said. Everything I've written here depends on you having read what he's written about this magnificent song. What happens in the bridge in this song has been as subtly prepared for as the surreal synth break on “Living for the City” on the A side of this same album. Where in the other song Wonder finesses thirds as melodic embellishments of blues tonality to foreshadow chromatic mediants soaring over a descending octatonic bass line that reaches an unresolved Neapolitan harmony that becomes a never-resolved “Amen” cadence in “Living for the City”, here the chromaticism in the line cliché that kicks off the song is transformed into a surreal chain of chromatic root movement sliding down every half-step of what in other hands could have been an utterly pedestrian Andalusian cadence cycling through a route tetrachord.  Fortunately that’s not what we got!  Or, to put it another way, maybe that descent through a tetrachord “is” in there but so cleverly disguised with all the chromaticism and suspensions we don’t feel like we’ve been given a mere cliché.
 
Now about verse 3 and the fade-out, I can't resist pointing out that the "ba" passages unmistakably begin with imitative counterpoint.  Wonder doesn't go so far as to create a canon but the half-measure separation between entrances counts, as far as I'm concerned, as imitative counterpoint.  Where the fade-out is concerned Wonder's vocal textures don't overwhelm our attention, as Ethan Hein pointed out. In his book The Technique and Spirit of Fugue George Oldroyd warned that the rookie mistake beginners make when trying to write fugues is they think of voice-leading in terms of interval relationships when working on countersubjects for their fugue subjects.  A good countersubject needs a good contrasting rhythmic profile, otherwise, if your subject and countersubject have good voice-leading but there’s no rhythmic contrast you’re doing something like parallel lines rather than real counterpoint.

That gets me to the magnificent contrast between Wonder’s vocal lines at 3:30 onward in the close of the song.  We hear the glorious downward swoop of the line “Don’t you worry about a thing … “ and beneath it, in staccato rising contrast  As Ethan Hein put it:

…Then we have chorus 3, which is the same as chorus 2. There’s another bridge, the first half only, which goes straight into verse 4. This is followed by chorus 4, the same as chorus 1. There’s the second half of the bridge, doubled in length. The backing vocals are singing “to-do ‘stá bien chéééééévere” in a hip broken rhythm. Finally, there’s the outtro groove, which is the first half of verse 3 with the scat singing, while the “to-do stá bien chéééééévere” backing vocals continue. Stevie is economical, deploying the same musical idea over and over with different arrangements on top. Every section has some fresh musical interest, but you are never overwhelmed with too much information.

What makes it so glorious is that this is a classic example of contrary motion.  The descending line in continuous melisma is given counterpoint at two levels, the staccato, spacious element and the rising contrary motion in the “to-do … “ counterpoint.  It may not count as counterpoint to someone whose only idea of polyphony is 18^th century fugue but it’s counterpoint. It also fits the guidelines George Oldroyd gave fugue students that your subject needs a countersubject that has both a contrasting melodic profile (and/or direction) and, more importantly, a contrasting rhythmic profile so your would-be countersubject doesn’t vanish into all the good voice-leading of matching up with the subject.

So there’s a little lesson in counterpoint from Stevie Wonder, which is another reason I love this song.