“I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)” by Stevie Wonder

All Songs Considered

NPR

Music

4.4 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is the first episode of a new series on All Songs Considered, hosted by NPR Music critic Ann Powers and editor Daoud Tyler-Ameen. Most of what you hear on All Songs is focused on new music, but now, every other Thursday, Ann and Daoud will pick an old song and discuss how it has managed to stand the test of time and why we still care about it. This week’s song: “I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)” by Stevie Wonder, from 1972.

This episode is available for everyone, but upcoming episodes in this series will be just for NPR Music+ supporters. NPR Music+ is a new way to support NPR and public radio. When you join, you’ll get access to every episode in this new series, and you’ll get to hear every episode of All Songs Considered and Alt.Latino sponsor-free. Sign up at plus.npr.org/nprmusic

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there, All Songs Considered Listeners.
0:05.7	I'm Daoud Tyler Amin.
0:07.0	I'm an editor at NPR Music.
0:08.6	I'm Ann Powers.
0:10.4	I'm NPR Music's pop critic.
0:12.7	We're here with the first episode of a brand new thing for all songs listeners.
0:17.6	Some people might call it a podcast.
0:19.7	A series?
0:20.6	Yeah. We called it a couple of different things behind the podcast. A series, yeah.
0:20.9	We've called it a couple of different things behind the scenes.
0:23.2	Called it, what is it about this song?
0:25.0	Right.
0:25.6	Old songs considered.
0:27.2	Yeah.
0:28.1	Because most of what you hear on all songs is about brand new music.
0:32.1	But there is an entire world of older songs out there too.
0:36.0	Yeah, old stuff is coming at you all the time, you know, streaming algorithms and TikTok
0:40.3	and Instagram videos.
0:41.3	The grocery store, whatever's blaring through the speakers or even like on radio
0:46.3	stations where DJs don't even tell you the name of the song anymore.
0:50.3	Right. So we got curious about a certain kind of song that you hear all the time, but you might not necessarily think of as like canon. And some of them are great. And some of them are kind of puzzling, but they stick around. And that's the thing we wanted to talk about. But you know what, David, when you and I talk about this stuff, we come at it from pretty different perspectives. We're slightly
1:12.1	different ages. You're a musician. And you've written multiple books and one zillion articles
	...

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