Whitney Houston Funeral: 'Too High'

While watching Stevie Wonder performing at the funeral service for Whitney Houston, it occurred to me that there was a particular song Stevie's vast repertoire that might have served as an appropriate epitaph for the recently deceased songbird.

In 1973, Stevie Wonder released the magnificent “Innervisions,” widely regarded as one of the finest pop music albums of the 1970s and perhaps the peak of Stevie's spectacular career.

One of the songs on the record was an acerbic number called “Too high.” The lyrics tell the story of a young woman who becomes part of the Hollywood-New York celebrity scene... and ultimately succumbs to the deadly lure of drug abuse.

It was one of the few songs in Stevie Wonder's ouevre that deals directly with drugs.
Whitney was only about ten years old when the song was released... but it seems to partially presage her future life trajectory.

Naturally, Stevie (perhaps wisely) excluded this tune from the New Jersey memorial – he chose “Love's in need of love today” and “Ribbon in the sky.”

Here are the lyrics to Too High

I'm too high
I'm too high
But I ain't touched the sky

I'm too high
I'm too high
But I ain't touched the sky

She's a girl in a dream
She sees a four-eyed cartoon monster
On the T.V. screen
She takes another puff and says
It's a crazy scene
That red is green
And she's a tangerine

I'm too high
I'm too high
But I ain't left the ground

I'm too high
I'm too high
I hope I never ever come down

She's the girl in her life
But her world's a superficial paradise
She had a chance to make it big more than once or twice
But no dice
She wasn't very nice

I'm too high
I'm too high
I'm so high
I feel like I'm about to die

I can't ever touch the sky

I'm too high
She's a girl of the past
I guess that I got to her at last
A did you hear the news about the girl today
She passed away
What did her friend say

They said she's too high
Too high
Can't hang around anyway...