Stevie Wonder’s ‘Songs in the Key of Life’: The Masterpiece That Captured Every Color of Life [View all]

Stevie Wonder’s ‘Songs in the Key of Life’ Turns 40: The Masterpiece That Captured Every Color of Life
by Stereo Williams

The double album is the superstar musician’s favorite indulgence. A double LP, more often than not, is a status symbol for top-tier pop artists to both flex creatively and to announce themselves as an artiste of the highest order. Double albums are, by nature, sprawling; a testament to both the artist’s creative ambition and ego-driven indulgence. In the post-CD era, double albums are especially unnecessary and overstuffed—even the best double albums since 1987 are weighed down with just too much music—and not all of it is inspired. But in the 1970s, the album was still the tool with which artists transmitted their most evocative musical ideas, and the double album was a sign that you’d reached a certain level of artistry.

And while the LP era gave us a plethora of great double albums—the visceral urgency and variety of the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St., the mish-mash collection of eccentricities on the Beatles’ “White Album,” Marvin Gaye’s achingly personal Here My Dear, Elton John’s melodic pop opus Goodbye Yellow Brick Road—none of those great albums achieve the kind of balance in creative scope, musical variety and consistent listenability that Stevie Wonder captures so masterfully on his magnificent Songs In the Key of Life.

He’d had to fight to get to this place. In the 1960s, Wonder was one of Motown’s hitmakers, but hadn’t had anywhere near the level of consistency that label standard-bearers like The Supremes, Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye had enjoyed. His commercial lulls even led to in-house speculation at one point that it would be best for the label to drop the former child star.

“If I were the president of the company I’d do the same thing,” Wonder recalled decades later in a 1984 interview with David Breskin. “Straight out. But fortunately, it all worked out … to everyone’s surprise—or to some people’s surprise. Because some people would say things like, ‘Oh, that boy’s gonna really be great. You don’t know how talented that boy is.’ And the others would say ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh-huh, sure.’ They didn’t really vibe on me. Now [Motown greats] James Jamerson and Benny Benjamin always said I’d be great. I had the confidence that something good was gonna happen but I didn’t know when. And then … it began to happen.”

More here:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/02/stevie-wonder-s-songs-in-the-key-of-life-turns-40-the-masterpiece-that-captured-every-color-of-life.html

It's tough to pick a favorite song from this or any of Stevie records. All of Music On My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, Fullfillingnes' First Finale, Songs & Hotter Than July is what I'd say! Songs In The Key Of Life has Pastime Paradise, Have a Talk with God, Love's in Need of Love Today & of course I Wish & Sir Duke. As is one of my faves: