| Songs in the Key of Life | ||||
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| Studio album by Stevie Wonder | ||||
| Released | September 28, 1976 | |||
| Recorded | 1975–1976 Crystal Sound Studios (Hollywood, California) The Record Plant (Hollywood, California) The Record Plant (Sausalito, California) The Hit Factory (New York, New York) |
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| Genre | Soul, funk, pop | |||
| Length | 85:21 | |||
| Label | Tamla | |||
| Producer | Stevie Wonder | |||
| Stevie Wonder chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Songs in the key of life | ||||
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Songs in the Key of Life is the 13th album by American recording artist Stevie Wonder, released September 28, 1976, on Motown Records. It was the culmination of his "classic period" albums.[1] An ambitious double LP with a 4-song bonus EP,[2] Songs in the Key of Life became among the best-selling and most critically acclaimed albums of his career. In 2003, the album was ranked number 56 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
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By 1976, Stevie Wonder had become one of the most popular figures in R&B and pop music, not only in the United States but worldwide. Within a short space of time, the albums Talking Book, Innervisions and Fulfillingness' First Finale were all back-to-back top five successes, with the latter two winning Grammy Award for Album of the Year, in 1974 and 1975 respectively. By the end of 1975, Stevie Wonder became serious about quitting the music industry and to emigrate to Ghana working with handicapped children. Wonder had expressed his anger with the way that the United States Government was running the country. [3][4] A farewell concert was being considered as the best way to bring down the curtain on his career. Wonder changed his decision, when he signed a new contract with Motown on August 5, 1975, thinking he was better off making the most of his career. At the time, rivals such as Arista and Epic were also interested in him. The contract was laid out as a seven-year, seven LP, $37 million deal and gave him full artistic control, making this the largest deal ever made with a recording star up to that point.[3] Almost at the beginning Stevie took a year off from the music market, with a project for a double album to be released in 1976.[5] There was huge anticipation for the new album which was initially scheduled for release around October 1975. It was delayed on short notice when Wonder felt that further remixing was essential. According to Stevie Wonder, the marketing campaign at Motown decided to take advantage of the delay by producing "We're almost finished" t-shirts.[6]
Work on the new album continued into early 1976. A name was finally chosen for the album: Songs in the Key of Life. The title would represent the formula of a complex "key of life" and the proposals for indefinite success.[7] The album was finally released on September 28, 1976 after a two year wait as a double LP album with a four track seven-inch EP entitled A Something's Extra ("Saturn", "Ebony Eyes", "All Day Sucker" and "Easy Goin' Evening (My Mama's Call)") and a 24-page lyric and credit booklet.[6][8]
The working title was Let's see life the way it is.[9] Recording sessions for the album were split between the Crystal Industries in Hollywood; The Record Plant, Los Angeles and Sausalito in California; and The Hit Factory in New York City.[10] Sessions on the latter were particularly memorable, as Songs in the Key of Life was the first album to be actually recorded at The Hit Factory, while Wonder became the first client of Edward Germano, the studio's owner. Wonder initially booked a three-day session with Germano and ended up working there for nine months.[11] As a perfectionist, Wonder spent long hours in the studio for almost every track he recorded. He was "not eating or sleeping, while everyone around him struggled to keep up".[5] According to himself, "If my flow is goin', I keep on until I peak".
A total of 130 people worked on the album, but Wonder's preeminence during the album was evident. Among the people present during the sessions, there were legendary figures of R&B, soul and jazz music – Herbie Hancock played Fender Rhodes on "As", George Benson played electric guitar on "Another Star", and Minnie Riperton and Deniece Williams added backing vocals on "Ordinary Pain". Mike Sembello was a prominent personality throughout the album, playing guitar in several tracks and also co-writing "Saturn" with Wonder. Some of the most socially-conscious songs of the album were actually written by Wonder with other people – these included "Village Ghetto Land" and "Black Man" (co-written with Gary Byrd) "Pasttime Paradise" were co-written with Ronald Simmons ( He sent Wonder a poem in 1974 entitled "The A-tions of the World") and "Have a Talk With God" (co-written with Calvin Hardaway).
Highly anticipated, the album surpassed all commercial expectations. Surprisingly, it debuted straight at number one on the Billboard Pop Albums Chart on October 8, 1976, becoming only the third album in history to achieve that feat and the first by an American artist (after British singer/composer Elton John's Captain Fantastic and Rock of the Westies in 1975). In Canada, the album achieved the same feat, entering at #1 on the RPM national albums chart on October 16.[12] Songs in the Key of Life spent thirteen consecutive weeks at number one in the U.S., eleven during 1976. It was the album with the most weeks at number one during the year. In those eleven weeks, Songs in the Key of Life managed to block four other albums from reaching the top – in order, Boz Scaggs's Silk Degrees, Earth, Wind & Fire's Spirit, Led Zeppelin's soundtrack for The Song Remains the Same and Rod Stewart's A Night on the Town.[13] On January 15, 1977, the album finally dropped to number two behind Eagles' Hotel California and the following week it fell to number four. On January 29 it returned to the top for a fourteenth and final week. The album then began its final fall. It spent a total of thirty-five weeks inside the Top Ten and eighty weeks on the Billboard albums chart. Songs In the Key of Life also saw longevity at number-one on the Billboard R&B/Black Albums chart, spending twenty nonconsecutive weeks there.
In all, Songs in the Key of Life became the second best-selling album of 1977 in the U.S., only behind Fleetwood Mac's blockbuster Rumours, and it was certified as a Diamond album by the RIAA, for sales of ten million copies in the U.S. alone.[14] It was the highest selling R&B/Soul album on the Billboard Year-End chart that same year.[15]
Songs in the Key of Life was also the most successful Stevie Wonder project in terms of singles. The lead-off, the upbeat "I Wish" was released in November 1976, over a month after the album was released. On January 15, 1977 it reached number one on the Billboard R&B chart, where it spent five weeks at the top. Seven days after, it also reached the summit of the Billboard Hot 100, although it spent only one week at number one. The track became an international Top 10 single, and also reached number five in the UK. "I Wish" became one of Stevie Wonder's standards and remained one of his most sampled songs. In 1999, Will Smith used "I Wish" as the base for his U.S. number one single "Wild Wild West". The song repeated the main melody of "I Wish" as a riff and some lyrics re-formed. The follow-up, the jazzy "Sir Duke" surpassed the commercial success of "I Wish". It was released on March 1977 and also reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 (spending three weeks at the top starting on May 21) and the R&B Charts (for one week starting on May 28). It also reached number two in the UK, where it was kept off the top spot by the song "Free" by Deniece Williams' who had provided backing vocals on the album.
As sales for the album began to decline during the second half of 1977, the two other singles from Songs in the Key of Life failed to achieve the commercial success of "I Wish" and "Sir Duke". "Another Star" was released in August and reached only #32 on the Hot 100 (#18 on the R&B charts, and #29 in the UK) and "As" came out two months later, peaking at #36 on both the Pop and R&B Charts. Though not released as a single (because, even when Motown requested Wonder to release it, Stevie refused to), "Isn't She Lovely" received wide airplay and became one of Wonder's more popular songs. It was soon released by David Parton as a single in 1977 and became a Top 10 hit in the UK.
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | [16] |
| Billboard | (favorable)[17] |
| Robert Christgau | (A)[18] |
| PopMatters | (favorable)[19] |
| Rolling Stone | (favorable) 1976[20] |
| Rolling Stone | 2004[21] |
| Sputnikmusic | [22] |
| The Village Voice | (favorable)[23] |
| Virgin Encyclopedia | [24] |
| Yahoo! Music | (favorable)[25] |
At the time of release, reporters and music critics, and everyone who had worked on the album, traveled to a Longview Farm, a recording studio in Massachusetts for a press preview of the album. Stevie received everybody, autographed copies of the album and gave interviews. Critical reception was positive. The album was viewed as a guided tour through a wide range of musical styles as well as the life and feelings of the artist. It included recollections of childhood, of first love and lost love. It contained songs about faith and love among all peoples and songs about social justice for the poor and downtrodden.[26]
On February 19, 1977, Wonder was nominated for seven Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, an award that he had already won twice, in 1974 and 1975, for Innervisions and Fulfilligness' First Finale.[8] Since 1973, Stevie's presence at the Grammy ceremonies had been consistent – he attended most of the ceremonies and also used to perform on stage. But in 1976, he did not attend as he was not nominated for any awards (as he had not released any new material during the past year). Paul Simon, who received the Grammy for Album of the Year in that occasion (for Still Crazy After All These Years) jokingly thanked Stevie "for not releasing an album" that year. A year after, Wonder was nominated for Songs in the Key of Life in that same category, and was widely favored by many critics to take the award. The other nominees were Breezin' by George Benson, Chicago X by Chicago, Silk Degrees by Boz Scaggs, and the other favourite, Peter Frampton's Frampton Comes Alive!, which was also a huge critical and commercial success. Wonder was again absent from the ceremony, as he had developed an interest in visiting Africa. In February he traveled to Nigeria for two weeks, primarily to explore his musical heritage, as he put it. A satellite hook-up was arranged so that Stevie could be awarded his Grammys from across the sea. Bette Midler announced the results during the ceremony, and the audience was only able to see Stevie at a phone smiling and giving thanks.[27] The video signal was poor and the audio inaudible. Andy Williams went on to make a public blunder when he asked, "Stevie, can you see us?"[26] In all, Wonder won four out of seven nominations at the Grammys: Album of the Year, Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, Best Male Rhythm and Blues Performer, and Producer of the Year.
With time, the album became a standard, and it is considered Stevie Wonder's signature album. Songs in the Key of Life is often cited as one of the greatest albums in popular music history.[28] It was voted as the best album of the year in The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics poll; in 2001 the TV network VH1 named it the seventh greatest album of all time; in 2003, the album was ranked number 56 on Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
Many musicians have also remarked on the quality of the album and its influence on their own work. For example, Elton John said, in his notes for Stevie Wonder on the 2003 Rolling Stone's list of "The Immortals - The Greatest Artists of All Time" (in which Wonder was ranked number 15): "Let me put it this way: wherever I go in the world, I always take a copy of Songs in the Key of Life. For me, it's the best album ever made, and I'm always left in awe after I listen to it." [29] In an interview with Ebony magazine, Michael Jackson stated Songs in the Key of Life is his favorite Stevie Wonder album. George Michael cited the album as his favourite of all time[30] and with Mary J. Blige covered the track As for a 1999 hit single. R&B singers in particular have praised the album – Mariah Carey generally names the album as one of her favourites, and Whitney Houston also remarked on the influence of Songs in the Key of Life on her singing. (During the photoshoot for her Whitney: The Greatest Hits, as its seen on its respective home video, the album was played throughout the photo sessions at Houston's request.) The album's tracks have provided numerous samples for rap and hip-hop artists; for example, "Pastime Paradise," which itself drew on the first eight notes and four chords of J.S. Bach's Prelude No. 2 in C minor (BWV 847), was reworked by Coolio as "Gangsta's Paradise". In 1995, smooth jazz artist Najee recorded a cover album titled Najee Plays Songs from the Key of Life, which is based entirely on Wonder's album.
In September 2008, the album was voted the "Top Album of All Time" by the Yahoo! Music Playlist Blog, using a formula that combined 4 parameters - "Album Staying Power Value + Sales Value + Critical Rating Value + Grammy Award Value".[31]
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Love's in Need of Love Today" | Stevie Wonder | 7:06 |
| 2. | "Have a Talk with God" | Wonder, Calvin Hardaway | 2:42 |
| 3. | "Village Ghetto Land" | Wonder, Gary Byrd | 3:25 |
| 4. | "Contusion" | Wonder | 3:46 |
| 5. | "Sir Duke" | Wonder | 3:54 |
| 6. | "I Wish" | Wonder | 4:12 |
| 7. | "Knocks Me Off My Feet" | Wonder | 3:36 |
| 8. | "Pastime Paradise" | Wonder | 3:28 |
| 9. | "Summer Soft" | Wonder | 4:14 |
| 10. | "Ordinary Pain" | Wonder | 6:23 |
| 11. | "Isn't She Lovely?" | Wonder | 6:34 |
| 12. | "Joy Inside My Tears" | Wonder | 6:30 |
| 13. | "Black Man" | Wonder, Byrd | 8:30 |
| 14. | "Ngiculela - Es Una Historia - I Am Singing" | Wonder | 3:49 |
| 15. | "If It's Magic" | Wonder | 3:12 |
| 16. | "As" | Wonder | 7:08 |
| 17. | "Another Star" | Wonder | 8:28 |
| A Something's Extra | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length | ||||||
| 18. | "Saturn" | Wonder, Michael Sembello | 4:54 | ||||||
| 19. | "Ebony Eyes" | Wonder | 4:09 | ||||||
| 20. | "All Day Sucker" | Wonder | 5:06 | ||||||
| 21. | "Easy Goin' Evening (My Mama's Call)" | Wonder | 3:57 | ||||||
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Total length:
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1:44:54 | ||||||||
Side one
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Side two
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Side three
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Side four
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The "A Something's Extra" 7" EP was included with the special-edition version of the original LP. These tracks are also on most CD versions of the album, either split between both discs or appended to the end of the second disc.
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Album
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Singles
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| Preceded by Frampton Comes Alive! by Peter Frampton Wings over America by Wings |
Billboard 200 number-one album October 16, 1976 – January 14, 1977 January 29, 1977 – February 4, 1977 |
Succeeded by Hotel California by Eagles Hotel California by Eagles |
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