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Songs in the Key of Life is an album by American musician Stevie Wonder, released on Motown on September 28, 1976 (see 1976 in music). It was the last of five consecutive albums widely hailed as his "classic period", along with Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions and Fulfillingness' First Finale. A highly ambitious and experimental double LP, Songs in the Key of Life became the best-selling and among the most critically acclaimed albums of his career.

Background

As of 1976, Stevie Wonder had become one of the most popular figures of 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 5 successes, with the two latter winning Grammy Award for Album of the Year, in 1974 and 1975 respectively.

Stevie Wonder became serious about quitting the music industry by the end of 1975 eager to leave the United States to live and work on a permanent basis with handicapped children in Ghana annoyed with the way the United States Government were running the country.He was thinking that doing a farewell concert would be best way to bring down the curtain of his career. The plan was scrapped when he felt he was better off continuing his career. Signing a new contract with Motown on August 5, 1975 would prevent rivals such as Arista or Epic from signing him. The contract was laid out as a seven-year, seven LP, $37 million deal and would give him full artistic control, making this the largest deal ever made with a recording star up to that point. Almost at the beginning was a year off for Stevie in the music market, with a project for a double album to be released in 1976. There was huge anticipation for the new album, which was initially pencilled in for release around October 1975. It was pulled at short notice however, 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.

Stevie continued to work on his new album 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. The album would be finally released on September 28, 1976, 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 after a long two year wait.

Recording

The working title was known as Let's see life the way it is. Recording sessions for the album were spilt between the Crystal Industries in Hollywood; the Record Plant, Los Angeles; Sausalito in California and the Hit Factory in New York City. Stevie spent nearly three months from what was initially supposed to be only a couple of days at the latter recording studio. But, as a perfectionist, Stevie spent long hours in the studio for almost every track to be recorded. He was "not eating or sleeping, while everyone around him struggled to keep up". According to Stevie Wonder, "If my flow is goin', I keep on until I peak".

Commercial reception

Highly anticipated, the album surpassed all commercial expectations. Surprisingly, it debuted straight at number 1 on the Billboard Album Charts on 8 October 1976, becoming the third album in history to achieve that feat and the first by an American artist. In 1975, Elton John released the first two albums to debut right at the top of Billboard, those being Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy and Rock of the Westies. It's also remarkable that only six albums debuted at number 1 between 1975 and 1991, when the official counting of SoundScan began – the two Elton John albums (1975), Songs in the Key of Life (1976), Bruce Springsteen's Live/1975-85 (1986), Whitney Houston's Whitney and Michael Jackson's Bad (both 1987).

After debuting at the summit, Songs in the Key of Life spent 13 consecutive weeks at number 1, 11 of them inside the calendar year 1976. Achieving this, it was the album with most weeks at number 1 during the year. In those 11 weeks, Songs in the Key of Life managed to block 4 albums to reach the top – in order, Boz Scaggs's Silk Degrees, Earth, Wind & Fire's Spirit, the Led Zeppelin's soundtrack for The Song Remains the Same and Rod Stewart's A Night on the Town. On January 15, 1977, the album finally dropped to #2 behind Eagles Hotel California and the following week, it fell to #3, but on January 29 managed to spend a 14th, and final, week at the top. The album then began its final fall. It spent a total of 35 weeks inside the Top 10 and 80 weeks inside the overall Billboard Album Charts.

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 Diamond album by the RIAA, which means 10 million copies sold in the U.S. alone.

Singles

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 over a month after the album was released, in November 1976. On January 15, 1977 it reached #1 on the Billboard R&B Chart, where it spent 5 weeks at the top. Seven days after, it also reached the summit of the Billboard Hot 100, though occuped only one week at number 1. The track became an international Top 10 single, and also reached #5 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. #1 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 #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (spending three weeks at the top starting on May 21) and the R&B Charts (for 1 weeks starting on May 28). It also reached #2 in the UK, where it was kept off the top spot by Deniece Williams' "Free".

As interest for the album began to disappear during the second half of 1977, the two other singles from Songs in the Key of Life didn't 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, "Isn't She Lovely" received wide airplay and became one of Wonder's more popular songs.

Critical reception

At the time of release, reporters and music critics, and everyone who had worked on the album, traveled to a farm in Connecticut for a press preview of the album. Stevie received everybody, autographed copies of the album and gave interviews.

Critical reception was warmly positive. Most people were awed by Songs in the Key of Life. At the time, it was like a guided tour through the whole range of musical styles as well as through 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.

The album won a Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal and Album 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. 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 also remarked 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." Especially R&B singers have praised the album – Mariah Carey generally names the album as one of her favourites, and also Whitney Houston remarked 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 as Houston's request.)

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"