"Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer" is a 1971 song by Stevie Wonder. It comes from his album Where I'm Coming From. The song is a ballad, describing a failed relationship using the metaphor of changing seasons. Co-written by Syreeta Wright and released on Tamla 54202 in 1971 with the flip side of "We Can Work It Out", the single stalled at #78 on the Billboard Hot 100, but it remains one of Stevie Wonder's most popular ballads to this day. The song was remade by Joan Baez on her 1975 album Diamonds and Rust. It was also remade by Three Dog Night and included on their album Harmony.
Phil Collins also recorded the song for his album of soul covers, Going Back.
A large portion of the song is played during a scene in the film, Poetic Justice. The full song is on its accompanying soundtrack album.
A portion of this song was also remade by Lauryn Hill on Hip-Hop artist Common's "Retrospect For Life," found on his 1997 album One Day It'll All Make Sense.
Wonder performed a version of the song at Michael Jackson's memorial service on July 7, 2009, his voice cracking with emotion as he called out his friend's name during the song's final refrain, "Why didn't you stay?"
Famous quotes containing the words dreamed, leave and/or summer:
“... as women become free, economic, social factors, so becomes possible the full social combination of individuals in collective industry. With such freedom, such independence, such wider union, becomes possible also a union between man and woman such as the world has long dreamed of in vain.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)
“Science! true daughter of old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee—or how deem thee wise
Who woulds’t not leave him in his wandering,”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“The Roman rule was, to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. The old English rule was, “All summer in the field, and all winter in the study.” And it seems as if a man should learn to plant, or to fish, or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence at all events, and not be painful to his friends and fellow men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)