Michael Sembello is an American singer, songwriter, and musician whose career brilliantly spans the divide between highly respected session guitarist and pop hitmaker. Before achieving global fame with the smash hit “Maniac,” Sembello spent nearly a decade immersed in the elite world of studio music, beginning at the tender age of 17 when he joined the band of Stevie Wonder. His time with Wonder, particularly on the landmark albums Fulfillingness’ First Finale and Songs in the Key of Life, cemented his reputation as a versatile and skilled guitarist capable of navigating complex funk, soul, and jazz-fusion arrangements. This studio pedigree led to collaborations with a “Who’s Who” of music legends, including Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, George Benson, and Chaka Khan, for whom he often contributed both guitar work and songwriting.
🎸 The Sembello Guitar Style: Fusion Meets Pop
Sembello’s guitar playing style is characterized by its fluidity, sophistication, and adaptability—traits essential for a top session player. Trained by jazz great Pat Martino, Sembello possessed a deep understanding of harmonic theory, enabling him to craft solos and rhythmic parts that are both technically proficient and entirely serving of the song. His work for Stevie Wonder, such as the intricate jazz-rock lead on the instrumental “Contusion” (from Songs in the Key of Life), showcases his ability to execute complex, fast-paced fusion lines with perfect precision and tone. When he transitioned to his own pop career, his guitar work retained this sophistication but was streamlined to fit the synthesizer-heavy sound of the 1980s. His pop solos are often concise, memorable, and full of the sharp, bright tone typical of ’80s studio production, perfectly fusing his jazz background with new wave and synth-pop sensibilities.
💥 Three Essential Michael Sembello Tracks
While Sembello’s career spans decades of session work, his solo output produced several defining tracks that showcase his multi-faceted talent.
1. “Maniac” (1983)
This iconic, Grammy-winning, and Oscar-nominated song from the Flashdance soundtrack is Sembello’s biggest hit. Musically, it is defined by its driving synth-pop groove, but it is Sembello’s guitar work that gives it a crucial rock edge. The signature guitar solo is a masterclass in economical ’80s shredding: it’s short, perfectly phrased, and relies on fast, clean scale runs and aggressive whammy bar dives, demonstrating his ability to insert a technically impressive rock solo into a high-energy dance track.
2. “Automatic Man” (1983)
A strong track from his debut album Bossa Nova Hotel, “Automatic Man” shows off Sembello’s funk and R&B roots. The guitar work here is less focused on lead breaks and more on tight, rhythmic chord chops and syncopated funk guitar rhythms, similar to his session work from the 1970s. The guitar locks into the bass and drums, demonstrating the high-level rhythmic precision he learned while playing with Stevie Wonder’s legendary rhythm section.
3. “Gravity” (1985)
From the soundtrack to the film Cocoon, “Gravity” is a power ballad that showcases Sembello’s ability to use the guitar to create mood and atmosphere. The song features a clean, highly processed tone, and the guitar lines are expansive and emotive, relying on melodic bending and sustained notes rather than speed. This track demonstrates his ability to adapt his technical skills to create evocative, sophisticated AOR (Adult Oriented Rock) guitar parts that are complex beneath their radio-friendly surface.
🎉 Conclusion Wrap-up: Michael Sembello’s Dual Legacy
Michael Sembello’s career is a fascinating study of duality: a technically brilliant musician who successfully navigated both the demanding, anonymous world of the session studio and the volatile landscape of 1980s pop fame.
His genius as a guitarist lies in his adaptability and harmonic depth, skills he honed playing sophisticated funk and fusion with Stevie Wonder on classic albums like Songs in the Key of Life. This background gave him the rhythmic precision evident in tracks like “Automatic Man” and the theoretical fluency necessary to craft concise, yet melodically and harmonically rich, solos. Sembello proved that technical expertise could be perfectly distilled for mass appeal, delivering the iconic, high-energy guitar work of “Maniac” while simultaneously creating atmospheric, sophisticated parts for film scores like Cocoon (“Gravity“). Ultimately, Sembello’s enduring legacy is that of a versatile master whose deep musical knowledge provided the essential, often sophisticated, guitar foundations for some of the biggest hits across soul, funk, and 80s pop.
