Songs in the Key of Life

Disc 1
1	Love's in Need of Love Today 7:05
2	Have a Talk with God 2:42
3	Village Ghetto Land 3:25
4	Contusion 3:45
5	Sir Duke 3:54
6	I Wish 4:12
7	Knocks Me off My Feet 3:36
8	Pastime Paradise 3:27
9	Summer Soft 4:14
10	Ordinary Pain 6:23
Disc 2
1	Isn't She Lovely 6:34
2	Joy Inside My Tears 6:29
3	Black Man 8:29
4	Ngiculela -- Es Una Historia -- I Am Singing 3:48
5	If It's Magic 3:12
6	As 7:08
7	Another Star 8:28
8	Saturn 4:53
9	Ebony Eyes 4:08
10	All Day Sucker 5:05
11	Easy Goin' Evening (My Mama's Call) 3:56

Barnes & Noble

This 1976 double album took Wonder two years to complete, but it was the grand slam that cemented Wonder's status as a musical visionary. Songs in the Key of Life is his most balanced synergy of spirituality, romance, and politics. Musically, Wonder combines immediate melodies with more complex orchestration than he had on previous albums. Triumphant horns introduce the euphoric "Sir Duke," while a funky organ melody underpins the Grammy-winning single "I Wish." Meanwhile, simple songs such as "Knocks Me off My Feet" and "Joy Inside My Tears" are as emotionally stunning as grander affairs like the big band celebration "Another Star" and the jazzy "Summer Soft." The reissue also includes four songs that originally accompanied the album on a 45 insert, including "Ebony Eyes," an homage to African-American women, and the sexy, guitar funk classic "All Day Sucker." The significance of this recording to soul music is immeasurable -- Songs in the Key of Life is an incomparable tribute to love, spirit, justice, and the joy of life itself. Ganda Suthivarakom

All Music Guide

Songs in the Key of Life was Stevie Wonder's longest, most ambitious collection of songs, a two-LP (plus accompanying EP) set that -- just as the title promised -- 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. The opening "Love's in Need of Love Today" and "Have a Talk With God" are curiously subdued, but Stevie soon kicks into gear with "Village Ghetto Land," a fierce exposé of ghetto neglect set to a satirical baroque synthesizer. Hot on its heels comes the torrid fusion jam "Contusion," a big, brassy hit tribute to the recently departed Duke Ellington in "Sir Duke," and (another hit, this one a Grammy winner as well) the bumping poem to his childhood, "I Wish." Though they didn't necessarily appear in order, 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. 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 two-part, smooth-and-rough "Ordinary Pain," the bitterly ironic "All Day Sucker," or another classic heartbreaker, "Summer Soft." Those inclined toward Stevie Wonder the social-issues artist had quite a few songs to focus on as well: "Black Man" was a Bicentennial school lesson on remembering the vastly different people who helped build America; "Pastime Paradise" examined the plight of those who live in the past and have little hope for the future; "Village Ghetto Land" brought listeners to a nightmare of urban wasteland; and "Saturn" found Stevie questioning his kinship with the rest of humanity and amusingly imagining paradise as a residency on a distant planet. 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.) John Bush