Stevie Wonder: I can make improvements

Stevie Wonder is a work in progress who gets his "high" via music.

The legendary musician has won a staggering 22 Grammys during his long career and is known the world over thanks to his iconic songs, such as Happy Birthday and Isn't She Lovely. Many music fans view him as a Godlike figure thanks to his talents, especially his ability to perform piano so impeccably while blind, but Stevie still feels there is improvement to be made.

"I am consumed by music... I can see music," he told gq-magazine.co.uk. "Each instrument has its own colour. It's like a puzzle and when I fit all the pieces together, that's my high.

"I'm not a normal man - never have been. The more I accept that, the better I feel. I'm a work in progress."

Stevie dreamed big from a young age and was always keen to do better. But his mother Lula continued to be upset about his condition no matter how hard he worked at improving his life.

"I wanted to do all the things the sighted kids could - hopping from woodshed to woodshed and climbing trees. In my mind I was very adventurous," Stevie added.

"It bothered me that my mother was crying all the time. She thought God might be punishing her for something. She lived during a time when things were particularly difficult for a woman in her circumstances... So I just told her I was happy to be blind and I think she felt better after that."

And he has since become one of the most famous music stars on the planet. Pharrell Williams, who performed with both him and Daft Punk at this year's Grammy Awards, has nothing but respect for the singer.

"Stevie Wonder was a fixture in my life as a child. His music is probably the closest thing to auditory transcendence," Pharrell gushed. "His brilliance for paralleling the harmony of sounds and the way that red, orange and yellow are tri-tonal - I don't know that there's anyone else that's done it as many times as he has. He's a huge genius: red, orange, yellow. He's a master of that. The funny thing is light is also sound."

Another famous fan is Sir Elton John, who describes Stevie as the "greatest R&B singer who ever lived" and treasures the memory of meeting him on a private jet in 1973, gathered around a piano.