Stevie Wonder – Part Time Lover

“Part-Time Lover” – Single by Stevie Wonder from the album In Square Circle
B-side: “Instrumental”
Released: August 24, 1985
Songwriter: Stevie Wonder
Producer: Stevie Wonder
Charted No.1 in US and No.3 in UK

This song is about a cheating couple, and the machinations they go through to keep their affair a secret. They are part-time lovers because they have to keep it on the down-low:

We are strangers by day, lovers by night
Knowing it’s so wrong, but feeling so right

The song ends in a twist (or maybe, a tryst), when it becomes clear to the singer that his wife has a part-time lover of her own who is playing the same game.

Wonder says that he has been in a similar position, with a guy calling his home and trying to disguise his voice when Stevie answered it.

Syreeta Wright, who was Wonder’s wife from 1970 to 1972, sang backing vocals. She co-wrote Wonder’s 1970 song “If You Really Love Me” and had her own Top 10 hit with her duet with Billy Preston, “With You I’m Born Again.”

Also featured on this track is Luther Vandross, who can be heard humming at the end of the verses.

This reached #1 on the Billboard Pop, R&B, Dance and Adult Contemporary charts, making Stevie Wonder the first artist to score a #1 hit on four different Billboard charts.

Stevie Wonder earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance in 1986, for the song. Wonder is noted in the liner notes of the four-CD set Hitsville USA: The Motown Singles Collection Volume 2 1972-1992 as describing the music for the song as an ode to “You Can’t Hurry Love” and “My World Is Empty Without You”, both by the Supremes, former Motown labelmates of Wonder.