When Stevie Wonder opened up his performance at the British Summer Time Festival in Hyde Park, he told the 65,000 people in attendance in London that he had a message of hope even “in this horrible time we’re living in.”
“I encourage you to choose love over hate. It’s just that simple. Choose love over hate, right over wrong, kind over meanness. Hope over no hope at all,” he told the crowd.
He was celebrating his 1976 Grammy-winning album Songs In The Key Of Life, and in that spirit, he said, “The songs and the words that we talk about, those conditions still exist in the world and that hurts my heart.”
He went on to implore fans to call on their leaders to “cut the bull … and fix it” and called out those who live in hatred, saying, “We were all made in God’s image. When you hate someone, you’re hating that image. If I’m blind and I can see it, you can see it too.”
He went on to say, “All life does matter, but the reason that I say black lives matter is because we are the original people of this world. So in essence, everyone here has some black in you. You’ve all got some soul in you so stop denying your culture.”