Organizers certainly chose wisely by having Beyoncé, in fierce soul-belter mode, open the show with Wonder's first big hit, "Fingertips Part 2".
The opening track, Therapy, can be heard as a sly nod to Amy Winehouse's Rehab, with Blige playing against her serious image with some wry humour – but with a fierce gospel-soul groove that peaks with a hand-clapping breakdown.
He studies the radar and scans the horizon in search of emotional weather patterns and then rushes out into the gale, dragging the audience through fierce winds and soul-battering squalls.
For all my children's fierce and tender soul-mate love for one another, their deep friendship and obviously mutual adoration, lately they have been triggering and aggravating one another loudly and with alarming volatility.
The partisans of these two positions fought fierce battles for the soul of the church.
For now, the founding of the Foreign Policy Initiative suggests that there will be a fierce battle for the soul of the Obama administration between liberal hawks and neocons, on the one side, and between anti-interventionist progressives, on the other, over policy towards Afghanistan, Russia, China, and Iran.
But Peirsol's calm facade hides the soul of a fierce competitor.
A beautiful, talented and wonderfully caring soul, with a fierce loyalty to her many friends, great love of literature and language, and extraordinary compassion for those less fortunate than she.
It's a powerful piece, full of a fierce tenderness for its lost souls.
Throughout the series, Hunt's role was that of an archangel saving souls – with his fierce rival DCI Jim Keats playing the gatekeeper to hell or the Devil himself.
Nowhere is the battle for the heart and soul of America fiercer than in the field of education.
