Stevie Wonder released Songs in the Key of Life

Songs in the Key of Life Stevie Wonder

Released: September 28, 1976 Peak: 114 US, 120 RB, 2 UK, 110 CN, 6 AU, 11 DF Sales (in millions): 10.0 US, 0.3 UK, 11.0 world (includes US and UK) Genre: R&B

Tracks, Disc 1: Song Title (Writers) [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts. Love’s in Need of Love Today [7:05] (10 DF) Have a Talk with God (Calvin Hardaway, Wonder) [2:42] Village Ghettoland (Gary Byrd, Wonder) [3:25] Contusion [3:45] Sir Duke [3:51] (4/1/77, 1 BB, 1 CB, 1 GR, 1 HR, 2 RR, 3 AC, 1 RB, 2 UK, 1 CN, 12 DF) I Wish [4:13] (11/26/76, 1 BB, 1 CB, 4 GR, 1 HR, 4 RR, 23 AC, 1 RB, 5 UK, 1 CN, 11 DF) Knocks Me Off My Feet [3:36] Pastime Paradise [3:20] (18 DF) Summer Soft [4:16] Ordinary Pain [6:22] Tracks, Disc 2: Isn’t She Lovely [6:33] (1/8/77, 23 AC, 94 UK, 4 DF) Joy Inside My Tears [6:29] Black Man [8:29] (28 DF) Ngiculela ~ Es Una Historia ~ I Am Singing (translation by Thoko Mdalose, Raymond Maldanado) [3:48] If It’s Magic [3:12] As [7:09] (11/5/77, 36 BB, 69 CB, 24 AC, 36 RB) Another Star [8:22] (8/26/77, 32 BB, 36 CB, 31 GR, 29 AC, 18 RB, 29 UK, 34 CN, 31 DF) Bonus EP: Saturn (Michael Sembello, Wonder) [4:45] Ebony Eyes [4:10] All Day Sucker [5:06] Easy Goin’ Evening (My Mama’s Call) [3:58] Songs by Wonder unless noted otherwise. Total Running Time: 104:38

Rating: 4.585 out of 5.00 (average of 29 ratings) Quotable: “A rare moment when a master was faced with a new level of pressure, and responded by taking his game to new heights.” – Josh Tyrangiel and Alan Light, Time magazine Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

The Three-Peat So how do you follow two Album of the Year Grammy Awards (1973’s Innervisions and 1974’s Fullfillingness’ First Finale)? First, you take some time off. Wonder didn’t release any new material in 1975, a fact acknowledged by Paul Simon when he took home the Grammy for Album of the Year. He said, “I’d like to thank Stevie Wonder for not releasing an album this year.” Second, you come back and win Grammy’s 1976 Album of the Year. A New Contract “By 1975, had wanted to quit playing music, emigrate to Ghana and work with disabled children. He hated how the American government ran the country; he was considering a farewell concert. But then, he signed a seven-year, seven-album, $37 million deal with Motown and took the rest of 1975 off.” PM When he went back to work, “his perfectionism had become unrelenting – and he’d spend hours in the studio recording, refusing to eat or sleep.” PM He sometimes logged 48-hour sessions. NRR “His sessionmates struggled to keep up with Wonder’s pace, and bassist Nathan Watts once recalled Wonder calling him at 3 AM to come to the studio immediately and help out with ‘I Wish.’” PM “The two-year wait for Songs in the Key of Life was the longest in Wonder’s career to that point” CQ which had Motown execs nervous, but the eventual album “was a powerhouse – a rare moment when a master was faced with a new level of pressure, and responded by taking his game to new heights.” TL Wonder delivered what has often been regarded as his best album. It “featured more true classics than even most great artists write in a lifetime.” TL It didn’t hurt that it was a commercial juggernaut as well, spending 14 weeks at #1 on the Billboard album chart and racking up 11 million in sales worldwide. A Double Album and an EP Originally packaged as a double album plus an EP, Songs in the Key of Life, was “Wonder’s longest, most ambitious collection of songs.” AM It “is a Grand Artistic Statement, meant to demonstrate Wonder’s ability to entertain just about any audience he chooses.” EK It is “like stumbling into a cave full of treasure” JM and not knowing “which piece of gold to stuff into [one’s] pocket first.” JM “This is a record of 21 songs built from scratch by a coterie of the greatest musicians to ever pick up an instrument of any kind or sing a note. No double-album is as skipless as Songs in the Key of Life, and it’s likely that no record ever gets made again that even brushes the orbit of this one.” PM“Even the four tracks on the bonus EP are winners, and any number of other artists would be happy to have any of these “extras” on their regular albums.” CQ “It’s rumored that there is a vault, somewhere, someplace, of more than a hundred unreleased songs that Wonder had written during the album’s sessions.” PM What Makes It Great “If all this sounds overwhelming, it is; Stevie Wonder had talent to spare during the mid-‘70s, and instead of letting the reserve trickle out during the rest of the decade, he let it all go with one massive burst. (His only subsequent record of the ‘70s was the similarly gargantuan but largely instrumental soundtrack Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants).” AM The album showcases “all of Wonder’s most endearing characteristics – intricate and inventive arrangements, the sheer joy of music-making – and all of his most aggravating (mawkishness, a less-than-industrious approach to his lyrics) in one package.” EK “Stevie seems to be vacillating between pure genius and only-slightly-inspired mediocrity – sometimes within the same song.” JM This “was a historical document of Black excellence, empowerment, equality, humanity, recollections of childhood, faith, love lost and love gained and economical divide.” PM Studio Wizardy Always on the cutting edge of modern recording technology, the album is also a tour de force of studio wizardry, yet it’s also a deeply personal and humane work. The album deftly blends the social commentary of his recent work with an exuberance harking back to his earliest records. It “touched on nearly every issue under the sun, and did it all with ambitious (even for him), wide-ranging arrangements and some of the best performances of Wonder’s career.” AM The Players 130 musicians worked on the album, including George Benson, Herbie Hancock, Minne Riperton, Michael Sembello, and Deniece Williams. PM The Singles Here are thoughts on some of the individual songs from the album. “I Wish” Taken as a whole, the album tells his life story. I Wish is “one of the all-time funkiest looks back at childhood” TM and “one of the most joyous of Stevie’s singles…[which is] really saying something.” EK It was the first single from the album and one of two songs from Key to top the Billboard Hot 100. “Sir Duke” The album’s second single and second chart topper is “a big, brassy hit tribute to the recently departed Duke Ellington.” AM It ”is not only a delight, but it also something of a statement of purpose for Wonder. It’s telling that he name-checks Basie, Miller, Armstrong, Ellington, and Fitzgerald over, say, Mingus or Miles.” EK “Isn’t She Lovely” Isn’t She Lovely wasn’t released as a single in the U.S., but still became a favorite. The song is a “lovely celebration of the love for a newborn child,” AM although it also shows the problems of a double album, with “three minutes of baby noise.” AM One can “argue what can get cut to make a lean, mean single album. Songs in the Key of Life could almost be gotten down to fighting weight just by cutting tracks off when they start to drag.” AM “It’s like one of those giant novelty sundaes that’s free if you can finish it in one sitting. Delicious, but in the end a bit much.” EK “Another Star” The third single and third top-40 hit from the album is a “bursting-with-life samba” TM that features George Benson on guitar. “As” It might be necessary to try “skipping by the schmaltzy, whip-creamed tracks and focusing on the funk and jazz fusion-driven scoops of goodness.” JM However, there are long tracks which hold up. As “builds perfectly over the course of its seven minutes, thanks in large part to one of the most memorable choruses Stevie Wonder ever wrote (which is seriously freakin’ saying something).” EK It “could have/should have been the ‘Hey Jude’ of the 1970s.” EK The song also features Herbie Hancock on piano. The Love Songs While not organized as such, Songs in the Key of Life “contains nearly a full album on love and relationships, along with another full album on issues social and spiritual.” AM Regarding the former, “fans of the love album Talking Book can marvel that he sets the bar even higher here, with brilliant material like the tenderly cathartic and gloriously redemptive Joy Inside My Tears, …the bitterly ironic All Day Sucker, or another classic heartbreaker, Summer Soft.” AM Wonder also delivers “lengthy meditations” CQ on love through Love’s in Need of Love Today, “a prayer for the ages.” TM The Socially Conscious Songs “Those inclined toward Stevie Wonder the social-issues artist had quite a few songs to focus on as well.” AM “If Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On took stock of a situation, Songs in the Key of Life proffered solutions, a hope that better times lay ahead and recognition of what was good around us in the meantime.” CQ “Village Ghetto Land” Wonder offers “his definitive expression of an optimistic world vision that saw the potential for a kind of paradise beyond the gritty realities of Village Ghetto Land and Black Man.” CQ The former is “a fierce exposé of ghetto neglect set to a satirical baroque synthesizer” AM while “Black Man” “ Black Man was a Bicentennial school lesson on remembering the vastly different people who helped build America.” AM This “eight-minute tour of Stevie’s prowess as a musician and a lyricist” JM has been called “the apex of the album,” JM but can also be an example of excess. It “starts out great – positive message, bubbling funk, nice flourishes throughout. But as those teachers go on hectoring those poor students (which, by the way, flies in the face of all known pedagogical theories), [one] can’t help wishing they would just knock it off already.” EK “Saturn” “Saturn found Stevie questioning his kinship with the rest of humanity and amusingly imagining paradise as a residency on a distant planet.” AM “Pastime Paradise” “Pastime Paradise examined the plight of those who live in the past and have little hope for the future.” AM It became the basis for Coolio’s smash rap hit, “Gangsta’s Paradise,” nearly two decades later. Other Songs Other highlights are “the torrid fusion jam Contusion.” AM How about “the two-part, smooth-and-rough Ordinary Pain” AM where “the second half…sounds like a completely different song?” EK

Resources and Related Links: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Stevie Wonder AM AllMusic.com review by John Bush CQ Consequence.net (9/12/2022). “The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time” EK Eric Klinger, PopMatters’ Counterbalance series (2010-2012) JM Jason Mendelsohn, PopMatters’ Counterbalance series (2010-2012) TM Tom Moon (2008). 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. Workman Publishing Company, Inc.: New York, NY. Page 873. PM PasteMagazine.com (6/3/2024). “The 300 Greatest Albums of All Time” NRR National Recording Registry TL Time Magazine (11/13/2006). “All-TIME 100 Albums” by Josh Tyrangiel and Alan Light Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 6/20/2008; last updated 8/9/2024.