CLASSIC ALBUM: Stevie Wonder – Songs in the Key of Life

It’s 1976 and the world is treated to an album Stevie Wonder had spent his career working towards, following up Talking Book and Innervisions with his career peak, the expressive and intricate Songs In The Key Of Life. The album is a defining statement of Wonder’s impeccable skill as a performer and producer of classic soulful, pop music. The sublime opening 7 minutes of Love’s In Need of Love Today sets the tone for what is to come across the album’s 21 songs and 105 minutes in which Stevie will communicate issues and themes both personal and socio-political.   Love’s In Need Of Love Today gives way to the pure electro-future-funk spirituality of Have A Talk With God which is just smoothest of all grooves, followed by Village Ghetto Land, which along with Pastime Paradise, Black Man and Ngiculela-Es Una Historia-I Am Singing are protest songs addressing the stark reality of the pain and poverty inflicted by systemic racism.

As with many of Stevie Wonder’s greatest records, of which this is THE greatest, the album is a refined, calculated blend of pop, R&B, jazz, funk, and soul. With Sir Duke, As and Isn’t She Lovely’ we have some of Stevie’s best pop songs, whereas Confusion and Another Star are sublime cuts of slick jazz-funk. Songs In The Key Of Life is Stevie Wonder as a totally uncompromised auteur, making a singularly expansive brand of music, and free from constraints of pop-commercialism a third of the album’s tracks stretch beyond 6 minutes, as they regularly spin off into heavy, deep funk jams. 130 musicians were enlisted for the recording of Songs In The Key of Life whom with Stevie as bandleader are guided towards the grandiose vision of the artist, an ambitious and ultimately successful marriage of message and music. A powerful personal achievement and one so rare in music.