Natalie has a unique voice and a style of her own. I saw her in the 80s with 10,000 Maniacs and they were great.
When she was a teenager, Natalie Merchant worked at a day camp for special needs children, many of whom had been institutionalized since infancy and abandoned by their parents. This song was inspired by that experience.
The song peaked at #20 in the Billboard 100 and #10 in Canada in1996. Wonder was on the album Tigerlily that peaked at #13 in Billboard album charts in1995.
From Songfacts
She explained on a VH1 Storytellers appearance: “When I was 13 years old, we’re talking 1976, I spent my summer working as a volunteer for a bunch of hippies, basically, that got a seed grant from the Carter administration, which had a lot of really wonderful programs for the arts. These people started a day camp for handicapped children, and I worked for them the whole summer. A lot of these children were institutionalized – their parents had left the scene a long time ago. They didn’t function so well in a conventional sense, but it seems that a lot of the children had developed like a private language or new senses so they could navigate through the world, especially the blind and the deaf children that we worked with.
From an early age, I had that contact with children who had special needs. I had lost my fear of intimacy with them – especially with Down syndrome kids, they could be really unpredictable and up to that point I had been a little frightened of them. I maintained some of the friendships with those kids and I was always open to meeting children with special needs. So when I wrote the song ‘Wonder,’ I wrote the song about a woman who was born with handicaps that seemed insurmountable, but she did overcome them, greatly because she had a loving family, especially her adoptive mother – she had been given up to an institution at birth.”
This is a very meaningful song to many people who grew up with special needs and their caretakers. The song views these people as “wonders,” with doctors having no explanation for their condition, but seeing the work of God in the creation.
“I’ve met a lot of people through this song, and they’ve told me that they’ve taken it on as their song, that it describes them,” Merchant said. “It describes their strengths in spite of what others would see as deficiencies.”
Natalie Merchant performed this song, along with “Carnival,” on an episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by David Schwimmer in 1995.
Wonder
Doctors have come from distant cities, just to see me
Stand over my bed, disbelieving what they’re seeing
They say I must be one of the wonders
Of God’s own creation
And as far as they see, they can offer
No explanation
Newspapers ask intimate questions, want confessions
They reach into my head to steal, the glory of my story
They say I must be one of the wonders
Of God’s own creation
And as far as they see, they can offer
No explanation
Ooo, I believe, fate, fate smiled
And destiny laughed as she came to my cradle
Know this child will be able
Laughed as my body she lifted
Know this child will be gifted
With love, with patience, and with faith
She’ll make her way, she’ll make her way
People see me I’m a challenge to your balance
I’m over your heads how I confound you
And astound you
To know I must be one of the wonders
They say I must be one of the wonders
Of God’s own creation
And as far as they see, they can offer
No explanation
Ooo, I believe, fate, fate smiled
And destiny laughed as she came to my cradle
Know this child will be able
Laughed as she came to my mother
Know this child will not suffer
Laughed as my body she lifted
Know this child will be gifted
With love, with patience and with faith
She’ll make her way, she’ll make her way
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Cool track — haven’t heard this before. The guitarist leaves about as space as Carlos Santana though…he/she doesn’t stop playing lol
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I do like the intro riff… Her voice is unique…
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Very cool voice. Engaging video too. Good share again
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Listening to it again…I agree with you…he/she should have let it breathe a little more.
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Yeah. I liked it a lot at the start but it just didn’t stop
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After I listened again I knew you were right. It’s missing the dynamic it needed.
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Excellent song, nice back story to it that I didn’t know. tigerlily is one of my favorite ’90s albums.
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I always assumed she wrote the song about herself and thought it was a bit presumptuous… this is a much nicer backstory.
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I didn’t know this either. I’ve followed her since the 80s when I got to see them live…She seems to go out of her way to not to be noticed.
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Social conscience songs are certainly something she does a lot of, so it’s not too surprising. I have a lot of time for 2001’s Motherland album.
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The guitar player that played on this song was Eric Schenkman from the band The Spin Doctors.
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She’s got a lovely voice. Glad she created this song. The only CD of hers I’m familiar with is In My Tribe and every song is beautiful on it and several/most are socially conscious.
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They are and I love her style. She just seems very natural and goes out of her way not to be the center of attention. She is one singer that has her own style.
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I’m going to feature her on one of my coloring pages soon. Her song today inspired me 🙂
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Cool! She is a beautiful lady who goes out of her way not to be revealing… I really respect her. I’m happy I got to see her with the Maniacs
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She does have a cool voice.
Some of the songfacts data is hinky, tho (I’ve encountered that before). I think the 1976 date is wrong (mis-keyed by SF and not the first time). She could not have been 13 in the summer of ’76 because she was born in 1963 and her birthday is in October. That would make her 12. Plus, her hippies couldn’t have gotten seed from the Carter Administration, then, because he hadn’t been elected, yet. I think it is supposed to be 1977.
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Yea I’ve heard her talk about it on VH1 and she just said when she was young and left it at that.
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Have you ever seen 10,000 Maniacs?
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Yes I did in the 80s. She went out of her way not to be the “star” but you couldn’t keep your eyes off of her.
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I distinctly remember a convo I had with a HS classmate (we’d known each other since 2nd grade). We were talking about music & he was into them. I’d never heard of them. This would have been around 1982, IIRC…
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I didn’t see them until the latter half of the eighties.
I had some friends into alternative music and they got me into them.
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