Songs in the Key of Life

Songs in the Key of Life is Stevie Wonder's eighteenth album, a sprawling double LP with a bonus seven-inch EP, released by Motown's Tamla label on September 28, 1976^[1]. It arrived after more than two years of nearly nonstop writing and recording, much of it at Crystal Sound in Hollywood with additional sessions at the Record Plant studios in Hollywood and Sausalito and at the Hit Factory in New York^[1].

Wonder made the album from a position of near-total leverage. After winning Album of the Year at consecutive Grammy ceremonies, he signed a contract with Motown in August 1975 reportedly worth 37 million dollars, the largest recording deal in the industry's history at the time, which gave him complete creative control^[1]. Before agreeing to it, he had seriously considered leaving the music business to work with children with disabilities in Ghana, and that restlessness seems to have fed directly into the obsessive intensity of the sessions that followed. The album's title reportedly came to him in a dream, and collaborators have described being called back into the studio in the middle of the night because Wonder's creative momentum was running and he had no intention of stopping^[1].

Thematically, the record ranges across spirituality, romantic love, nostalgia, parenthood, social inequality, and the unifying power of music itself, moving fluidly between funk, jazz, R&B, progressive soul, classical touches, and pop songcraft^[1]. It was received as an immediate and enduring triumph: five-star reviews from outlets including AllMusic and Rolling Stone, an A grade from Christgau's Record Guide, and the Grammy for Album of the Year, which Wonder accepted via satellite from Nigeria^[1]. In 2003 it was added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry as a work of cultural, historical, or aesthetic significance, and it has continued to climb critical rankings since, reaching fourth place on Rolling Stone's 2020 list of the greatest albums ever made^[1].

"Sir Duke," Wonder's tribute to Duke Ellington and the jazz musicians who preceded him, became the album's biggest single and one of its most enduring songs^[1].