(Credits: Far Out / Steve Alexander)
Mon 10 November 2025 18:30, UK
Glenn Frey didn’t want Eagles to be the kind of band that entered the business for a pat on the back.
They were happy to make music only for themselves, and even during their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Don Henley talked about getting the recognition for doing their work rather than becoming famous. Frey may have felt the same way in some respects, but he knew that the trophies in the music industry should be reserved for the kind of people who truly deserve it.
But it’s not like the California rockers were one of the most decorated bands in the world or anything. The public may have loved their songs and given them the highest-selling records in the history of the world, but the critics had a much different opinion when they first started listening to them. They liked tunes like ‘Take It Easy’, but it’s not like they were head over heels when watching them make their own version of a concept record when Desperado came out.
They didn’t see Eagles as a band you needed to think very hard about, but they had a fair bit of social commentary that deserved to be dissected. There are fantastic moments throughout their career where they have written pieces of social commentary, and listening to them tear through the American dream on tunes like ‘The Last Resort’, they clearly had more to say than the fun in the sun tunes that everyone else had been trying to write ever since Brian Wilson took over the West Coast.
And while there were a lot of moments on Hotel California, they never claimed to be the best musicians in the world. They had the vocals covered whenever they made their masterpieces, but all you would need to play most of their songs were a bunch of cowboy chords that everyone learns in their first few weeks of playing guitar. So when you compare that to the biggest names in R&B, there was no real competition.
Frey had a healthy respect for all strains of music, but he felt that if anyone were to earn a Grammy, it would have to be Stevie Wonder, saying, “Mass appeal is definitely suspect. Just look at our Grammy winners, Stevie Wonder excluded. Sometimes all that mass appeal means is that you simplified your equation down to the lowest common denominator.” It’s not like Frey didn’t know what he was talking about, either.
He may have looked like every other hopeful recovering hippy out of Los Angeles, but he was born and raised in Detroit, and that meant a regular diet of listening to some of the greatest Motown tunes ever made. There are plenty of artists that have carved out a legacy at Hitsville, but even by the standards of artists like Smokey Robinson, Wonder smokes nearly every single person that ever spent time on the charts.
His run of Grammy wins in his prime may have looked like he cut some kind of deal with the Recording Academy, but his track record frankly was that good. Even though some of his massive records were transitional in some respects, anyone who has ever listened to Songs in the Key of Life in full knows that he deserves nearly every single accolade available thanks to records like ‘Sir Duke’ or ‘I Wish’.
Even if he could hold his own with the best musicians in the world, the fact that Wonder was able to go on that run and be nearly universally accepted is a breath of fresh air. The music world can be incredibly polarising no matter what your taste in music is, but rarely has the entire community listened to one artist, agreed that they were a cut above the rest, and showered them with all the praise that they deserved.
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