I Just Called to Say I Love You (Song)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“I Just Called to Say I Love You” is a ballad written, produced, and performed by American R&B singer and songwriter Stevie Wonder. It was a major international hit, and remains Wonder’s best-selling single to date, having topped a record 19 charts.

The song was the lead single from the 1984 soundtrack album The Woman in Red, along with two other songs by Wonder, and scored number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks from October 13 to 27, 1984. It also became his tenth number-one on the R&B chart, and his fourth on the adult contemporary chart; it spent three weeks at the top of both charts, and for the same weeks as on the Hot 100. The song also became Wonder’s only solo UK number-one success, staying at the top for six weeks, in the process also becoming Motown Records‘ biggest-selling single in the UK, a distinction it still held as of 2018. In addition, the song won both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Original Song. The song also received three nominations at the 27th Grammy Awards for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, Song of the Year, and Best Pop Instrumental Performance.

Composition

The song’s lyrics have Wonder surprising someone in his life with an unexpected telephone call. Throughout the song, Wonder lists various events in a yearly calendar that might prompt someone to call a loved one. Yet he explains no special annual event such as New Year’s Day or Halloween spurred the call. He simply wants to say that he loves them from the bottom of his heart. Cash Box described the song as “a tender and romantic love letter which captures the ever-present and Wonderous feeling of love and optimism.”

There was a dispute among Wonder, his former writing partner Lee Garrett, and Lloyd Chiate as to who actually wrote the song. Chiate claimed in a lawsuit that he and Garrett wrote the song years before its 1984 release. However, a jury ultimately sided with Wonder.

Personnel

• Stevie Wonder – lead and backing vocals, synthesizers, programming, Roland VP-330, Linn 9000, and Oberheim DMX

Music video

A music video of the song has Wonder, during a concert, singing into a telephone receiver while seated at a piano. By the end of the song, he and the audience are standing and swaying to the music. The video features concert footage recorded in Rotterdam Ahoy, in the Netherlands, on August 10, 1984.

Charts

Weekly charts

• Brave – I Just Called To Say I Love You (Official Video)

Year-end charts

• Teresa Teng 鄧麗君 I Just Called To Say I Love You NHK

Decade-end charts

• Andrea Bocelli sings I Just Called To Say I Love You

All-time charts

• Julia Nachalova – I Just Call To Say I Love You

2019–20 chart performance for “I Just Called to Say I Love You“

• Anuradha Paudwa – I Just Call To Say I Love You

Sales and certifications

Certifications and sales for “I Just Called to Say I Love You”

I Call Just To Say I Love You Covers

• Francis Goya – I just call to say i love you

• Sung Si Kyung – I just call to say I love you

• Emmerson Nogueira – I Just Called To Say I Love You

• Raul Midon & Herbie Hancock – I Just Call To Say I Love You

• Inka Gold – I Just Call To Say I Love You

• Paul Mauriat – I just call to say I love you

• Ray Conniff – I Just Called To Say I Love You (Brazil, 1985)

• James Last – I Just Called To Say I Love You

• Mantovani – I Just Called To Say I Love You

• Dave Monk – I just called to say I love you

• I Just Called To Say I Love You – Stevie Wonder (cover on guitar by Eric)

• Eastside Band – I just called to say I love you

• Richard Clayderman – I Just Called to Say I Love You

The Woman in Red (1984 Film)

The Woman in Red is a 1984 American romantic comedy film directed by and starring Gene Wilder. Wilder also wrote the script, adapting it from the Yves Robert film Pardon Mon Affaire (Sorry My Affair) (Un éléphant ça trompe énormément (An Elephant Can Be Extremely Deceptive)). It co-stars Charles Grodin, Gilda Radner, Joseph Bologna, Judith Ivey, and Kelly LeBrock. The film won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for “I Just Called to Say I Love You“, written and performed by Stevie Wonder.

The film follows a married man who becomes infatuated with another woman and his amusingly unsuccessful attempts to first meet and then become intimate with her.

Plot

San Francisco advertising man Theodore “Teddy” Pierce is amused by, then infatuated with Charlotte, a beautiful woman whose red dress is billowed by a current of air from crossing over a ventilation grate, exposing her red satin string bikini panties.

Despite his interest, Teddy is already married to Didi, but he cannot get this woman out of his mind. When his friend Joe, who has an affair of his own, is abandoned by his wife, who leaves with everything, Teddy gets cold feet and decides to forget it. Still, when he tells his friends Buddy, Joe, and Michael, they encourage him, and after meeting the woman again through his office window, he tries to ask her for a date, but mistakenly phones Ms. Milner, a plain ad-agency employee who is flattered by his interest.

From the beginning, his attempts at an affair are doomed, as he creates a charade to get to the date, but Didi tells him that their neighbor told them to take care of her small boy. Ms. Milner gets her revenge by bending Teddy’s car antenna and scratching his car. Ms. Milner later tries to make amends, but later when Teddy sees that she is the one who got the memo for the date, he flees, and once more she gets her revenge by letting go of Teddy’s car brake, causing him to crash his car. Ms. Milner later acts amicably with Teddy, because she already started seeing another work colleague, much to Teddy’s confusion. Charlotte later agrees to meet for dinner with Teddy after he steadfastly asks for one, but once again, his plans fail when he receives a call from Charlotte saying she is in Los Angeles working and to go to meet her. He creates another charade by writing a fake telegram from work and sending it to himself, telling him to go to Los Angeles, but due to the airport being fogged in, his flight is detoured to San Diego.

Teddy ultimately does become acquainted with the woman in red, a British model named Charlotte, going horseback riding with her (after finding out she liked riding horses), and even inviting her out on what is supposed to be a date with his nanny, but turns out to be an early surprise party with his relatives and Didi. Teddy’s friend Buddy, who goes along them lending his car and being a chauffeur after losing a bet with Teddy, rapidly creates an excuse so as to not arouse any suspicions. After Buddy, Joe and Michael create a ruse to take him to Charlotte, he radically alters his wardrobe and begins acting nonchalant to try to capture his love’s interest.

Events come to a head in Charlotte’s high-rise apartment, where she invites Teddy into her satin bed. He is thrilled, as he is finally about to consummate his fantasy, until her airline pilot husband suddenly comes home. Trying to escape, Teddy ends up on a ledge, where passersby below gather as they believe he is about to take his own life, all captured on live television. Didi, while watching this on live television, tears up as she believes Teddy is doing this because of her own cheating. After hearing Charlotte making love with her husband, he decides that the affair is not worth it and jumps off the window ledge, and waits to be caught by the firemen. While falling, Teddy sees a lovely newswoman who smiles at him, perhaps hinting at another pursuit of an affair.

Cast

• Gene Wilder as Ted Pierce
• Kelly LeBrock as Charlotte
• Gilda Radner as Ms. Milner
• Charles Grodin as Buddy
• Joseph Bologna as Joe
• Judith Ivey as Didi Pierce
• Michael Zorek as Shelly
• Michael Huddleston as Michael
• Kyle T. Heffner as Richard
• Billy Beck as The Bartender
• Kyra Stempel as Missy Pierce
• Robin Ignico as Becky Pierce
• Viola Kates Stimpson as Mama Dell
• Danny Wells as The Waiter
• Thom Mathews as Erik
• Buddy Silberman as Gilbert
• Monica Parker as Corinne
• Ernest Harada as The Doorman
• Julann Griffin as Miss Griffin
• Sandra Wilder as Blonde Photographer

Production

Background

In 1975, Wilder released his directorial debut, The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother. The film was a financial success, and was followed in 1977 by The World’s Greatest Lover, again, a financial success. Between the two movies, the French film Pardon Mon Affaire was released, as well as its sequel Pardon Mon Affaire, Too!

‘The Woman in Red’ was Wilder’s first solo directorial credit in seven years. During that time he starred in the films The Frisco Kid, Sunday Lovers, Stir Crazy & Hanky Panky.

While not the first movie to be given a PG-13 rating, it was the first to feature frontal (but brief) nudity, by Kelly LeBrock.

Filming

The Woman in Red was shot in the fall of 1983.

Music

The original motion picture soundtrack was composed by Stevie Wonder, with the exception of “It’s More Than You” by Ben Bridges, and features performances by Wonder and Dionne Warwick. Wonder received an Academy Award for Best Original Song for the song “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” The album reached number four on the US Billboard 200 chart, number one on the R&B Albums chart (for four weeks), and number two on the UK Albums Chart. It reached number one on the Italian, Spanish, and Swedish album charts.

Release

The Woman in Red was released by Orion Pictures in the United States on August 15, 1984.

Home media

The film was originally released on VHS and LaserDisc, and then DVD. In the U.S. and Canada Kino Lorber released The Woman in Red on Blu-ray in 2017 with a trailer and an audio commentary track by critic and filmmaker Jim Hemphill. In January 2019 a German Blu-ray was released. In November 27, 2023 Final Cut Entertainment released it on Blu Ray in the UK for the First Time..

Reception

The film gained publicity for Kelly LeBrock, a real-life model making her screen debut, particularly for the skirt-and-grate scene, a variation of Marilyn Monroe’s iconic pose in The Seven Year Itch.

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 32% based on reviews from 19 critics. On Metacritic the film has a score of 55 out of 100, based on reviews from 10 critics.

Richard Schickel of Time wrote that the film was “one of this summer’s more pungent pleasures, a well-made sex farce of classical proportions. If there is a horse to fall off or an airplane forced to land at the wrong airport, you may be sure Teddy will be aboard.”

Variety wrote that “the laughs roll along readily as Wilder tries one idea after another to sneak out on wife Judith Ivey and family to rendezvous with Le Brock.” Variety also praised Gilda Radner for her performance.

Jeff Stricker of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune said, “there is nothing deep or profound in this movie, but there are no pretensions, either. It is a light, summer-weight sitcom and a loving adaptation of its French predecessor, a pleasing 80 minutes that won’t leave you hysterical, but will certainly amuse.”

Kathleen Carroll of the New York Daily News had mixed feelings about the film, saying she thought it was “a giddy, reasonably funny farce, but its characters, especially Teddy’s three infantile male buddies, are not nearly as well-defined as they were in the original French comedy.”

A far more negative review came from Ralph Novak of People, who said, “when it comes to criminal waste of time and talent, it would be hard to top this would-be romantic comedy, which Gene Wilder wrote, directed, and stars in”; he singled out the use of Stevie Wonder’s songs (“having access to the ability of Stevie Wonder and trashing it in this way ought to be a capital offense”), and called it “spurious in the extreme” before adding that it “drones on through all the clichés of infidelity to a resolution that isn’t emotionally, morally or comedically satisfying.”

Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune awarded the film only one star, and declared, “the only reason to watch the film is an occasional glimpse of the stunningly beautiful model Kelly Le Brock making her feature-film debut as the femme fatale who turns the head of the married milquetoast character played by Wilder.” He dismissed the other central characters as “some kind of sick variation on the classic swinging California married man” and had even less positive things to say about the presentation of Gilda Radner in it:

You may have heard that Wilder’s real-life love, Gilda Radner, is also in the picture and therefore you assume that she has a substantial role in it. Forget it. She has a minor, singularly unfunny role as an old maid. Radner is so ugly in this film that we constantly wonder if it’s the makeup or whether she is ill. She’s 45 years old and severely dehydrated in this picture. Rarely has anyone filmed their own girlfriend in such an unattractive manner.

Nancy Scoll of the San Francisco Examiner also awarded the film a one-star rating and said that it was “a classic example of a self-indulgent actor who should never direct or write [because] the script is embarrassing and the gags are clumsy.”

Accolades

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

• 2004: AFI’s 100 Years…100 Songs:
  • “I Just Called to Say I Love You” – Nominated

Watch The Trailer

The Woman in Red (soundtrack)

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Robert Christgau	B+
The Rolling Stone Album Guide

The Woman in Red: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the second soundtrack album released by American musician Stevie Wonder on the Motown label. Also featuring Dionne Warwick, the album was released in 1984 for the film of the same name (starring Gene Wilder). It features Wonder’s biggest hit, “I Just Called to Say I Love You“, which hit number one internationally and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, and also features the follow-up hit, “Love Light in Flight” (a US top-20 hit) and “Don’t Drive Drunk”, the song and the accompanying music video for which were used in the Ad Council and the US Department of Transportation‘s Drunk Driving Prevention public service announcement the following year.

Track listing

All songs written by Stevie Wonder, except “It’s More Than You” by Ben Bridges.

Side one

1. “The Woman in Red” – 4:38

1. “It’s You” (featuring Dionne Warwick) – 4:56

1. “It’s More Than You” – 3:15

1. “I Just Called to Say I Love You” – 6:17

Side two

1. “Love Light in Flight” – 6:54

1. “Moments Aren’t Moments” (solo by Dionne Warwick) – 4:33

1. “Weakness” (with Dionne Warwick) – 4:13

1. “Don’t Drive Drunk” – 6:33

• Note: Later pressings of the compact disc have the single version of “I Just Called to Say I Love You”, due to its popularity.

Personnel

• Stevie Wonder – piano, synthesizers, drums, harmonica, vocoder, lead vocals, backing vocals (1–5, 7–8)
• Dionne Warwick – lead vocals (2, 6–7)
• Nathan Watts – bass guitar (2–3,7)
• James Allen – drums (2,7)
• Isaiah Sanders – piano, synthesizer, drums (3,7)
• Ben Bridges – electric guitar (3)
• Lenny Castro – congas (5)
• Larry Gittens – trumpet (6)
• Bob Malach – saxophone (7)

Commercial performance

The album reached number four on the US Billboard 200 chart, number one on the R&B Albums chart (for four weeks) and number two on the UK Albums Chart, where it was kept off the top spot by the albums Now That’s What I Call Music 3 and David Bowie‘s Tonight. Wonder’s albums Songs in the Key of Life and Hotter than July also reached number two in the UK and to date he has failed to achieve a number-one album there. However, the single “I Just Called to Say I Love You”, taken from The Woman in Red, was a massive hit in the UK, reaching number one and becoming the second best-selling single of 1984 (only behind Band Aid‘s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?“) and the third most successful single of the entire 1980s there.

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications and sales

Accolades

Comments