Songs In The Key Of Life

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Songs In The Key Of Life album cover
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Total Tracks: 21   Total Length: 105:03

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Michelangelo Matos

eMusic Contributor

11.16.10
R&B's Thanksgiving dinner
2000 | Label: Motown

One of my earliest (hazy) memories is of being very small and knowing that this album was what everybody was listening to. Songs in the Key of Life was a real-time cultural event, the ultimate proof in that Bicentennial year that America could do it all, and so could its most beloved popular musician. What's remarkable is how well it's held up, given that the thing really is excessive. It's not simply a double-LP, but a double-LP with a bonus EP — and guess what usually goes first when people make their own condensed versions?

Just kidding: I don't know anybody who condenses this thing. Stevie Wonder wanted you to take all of him, and if that meant some of his most mooning ballads, real gunk like the friggin' endless "Joy Inside My Tears" or "Saturn," sci-fi humanism with a synth riff that's this close to Europe's "The Final Countdown," so be it. This is R&B's Thanksgiving dinner.

One of the best things about Songs is how carefully it's put together. The first five songs (Side A on vinyl) are particularly well chosen. The preacherly benediction "Love's in Need of Love Today" moves easily into the murmured "Have a Talk with God,"… read more »

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This is in the best albums of history stack

banomassa

The pinnacle of Stevie's career and the example for what talent and a whole lot of hard work and a lot of heart and soul will culminate with. The first half of this record is my personal favorite but all of it is quite the musical statement. Sir Duke and I wish have got grooves that won't quit. And Isn't She Lovely is one of the most beautiful songs ever. Then there's the first three tracks where Stevie's genius and social shortcomings mash up to make sweet music, proving you can make great music and say something too.

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The Album That Defines The '70s

Musiclover912

This album, along with "Talking Book", "Innervisions", and "Fulfillingness' First Finale" would comprise the ultimate 3 LP or 3 CD Greatest Hits compilation of the '70s for Stevie (Secret Life Of Plants had its moments but not as strong as the albums I previously mentioned). Not a dull song in the bunch..whoever gave it 4 and a half stars is NOT a true fan of R&B. You name me one album during that time period that had 17 of its 21 tracks getting airplay? You know this was hot when Frankie Crocker played "Isn't She Lovely" on WBLS before the album was even completed in the studio

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The Greatness

MadDogM13

In the early-to-mid-Seventies, Stevie Wonder released a half dozen albums that rivaled the Beatles' run the previous decade for creativity, energy, celebration, and ubiquity. And this two-and-a-half album set is his masterpiece. If you've heard the hits here and loved them, buy up--there are easily as many great songs here that never charted.

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You can feel it all over!

mr. mark

This may contain an "All Day Sucker", but it never sucks. Holds up wonderfully, no pun intended. Hits like "Isn't She Lovely", "Pastime Paradise" (butchered as "Rapper's Paradise" a decade or so later), and the glorious tribute "Sir Duke" (There's Basie, Miller, Satch-a-mo/And the king of all Sir Duke/And with a voice like Ella's ringing out/There's no way a man can lose.) You sure CAN feel it all over! With Wonder averaging about a disc a decade, check out possibly his best.

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Excessive? Yes. Glorious? Yes!

KrisWright

"Songs In The Key of Life" is so eclectic and excessive that it's almost like Stevie Wonder's own version of The White Album. But when you've got a talent as formidable as Stevie's - not to mention the incredible backing musicians on many of the tracks (including Herbie Hancock and George Benson) - there's really nothing to complain about. It's an album full of beauty, passion, invention, anger, nostalgia, love, and euphoria. It's hard to choose particular songs on such a varied album - you should really get the whole thing - but I would particularly recommend "I Wish", "Contusion", "Joy Inside My Tears", "Sir Duke" and the fantastic 70s-Pop emotional crescendo that is "As". Man... even just typing those titles out makes me want to go listen to this record again right now. That's just about the best personal recommendation I can give, isn't it?

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Album Revolution 4: HERE IT IS !!!!!

isaacmusicman

Yes, even though I feel "Innervisions" is Stevie's best record, "Songs In The Key Of Life" has the number 2 spot. Not to say that this album is not ambitious and brillant, because it is that and then some. In fact I might be persuaded to move to no. 1, only because it is a double-album(plus a small 45 type record on the side). Stevie pulled out all the stops here, in fact, if I was to do an overview of this moster of an album, it would not fit here! I will say this though, my two favorites on here are, "As" and "Ordinary Pain". Man, those two songs right there.....well, let's just say that my wife is sick....and tired of hearing them. A definate MASTERPIECE,and worth all the downloads!!!!!!

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Hard to understate its brilliance

dawhead

This album is without a doubt one of the most significant works in popular music of the 1970s. There are a few songs that are marginally less strong than the true highs, but almost everything about Songs In The Key Of Life shows absolute mastery of composition, performance and production. Stevie Wonder's masterpiece, easily on a par with any album by any artist of any era. 34 years later, its still utterly listenable, and totally essentially in defining my musical view of the universe, even though that now includes Steve Roach, Sufjan Stevens and Interpol.

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Brilliant

Hellpups

One of the best albums ever by any artist. This is essential Stevie.

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They Say 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

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