The interesting thing about this song is that in spite of the upbeat music, the whole adultery theme gets a very menacing treatment. There's a strong "it takes one to know one" message in the last part's description of how the adulterous man comes to realize his wife is cheating on him just as he's cheating on her. He knows he's doing wrong, as he acknowledges several times, but only now does the price he's going to pay for his infidelity make itself evident to him.
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His line "I have something that I must tell" also strongly hints that he's kicking himself because he really should have seen this coming, but was too focused on keeping his wife unsuspecting to harbor any suspicion of her. Thus, his discovery proves to be the punchline to a very macabre joke: his infidelity has both blinded him and opened his eyes.
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Of course, the humor in such irony is a lot easier to appreciate when somebody else is the butt of the joke. In the music video, Stevie Wonder merely provides the narration; four others act the parts of the cheating spouses and their partners in adultery, and in the end they're shown turning up at the concert where he's playing this song.
The interesting thing about this song is that in spite of the upbeat music, the whole adultery theme gets a very menacing treatment. There's a strong "it takes one to know one" message in the last part's description of how the adulterous man comes to realize his wife is cheating on him just as he's cheating on her. He knows he's doing wrong, as he acknowledges several times, but only now does the price he's going to pay for his infidelity make itself evident to him.
¶
His line "I have something that I must tell" also strongly hints that he's kicking himself because he really should have seen this coming, but was too focused on keeping his wife unsuspecting to harbor any suspicion of her. Thus, his discovery proves to be the punchline to a very macabre joke: his infidelity has both blinded him and opened his eyes.
¶
Of course, the humor in such irony is a lot easier to appreciate when somebody else is the butt of the joke. In the music video, Stevie Wonder merely provides the narration; four others act the parts of the cheating spouses and their partners in adultery, and in the end they're shown turning up at the concert where he's playing this song.
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