Tamla 340
Producer: Stevie Wonder
Track listing: Love’s in Need of Love Today / Have a Talk with God / Village Ghetto Land / Contusion / Sir Duke / I Wish / Knocks Me Off My Feet / Pastime Paradise / Summer Soft / Ordinary Pain / Saturn / Ebony Eyes / Isn’t She Lovely / Joy Inside My Tears / Black Man / Ngiculelo – Es Una Historia / I Am Singing / If It’s Magic / As / Another Star / All Day Sucker / Easy Goin’ Evening (My Mama’s Call)
October 16, 1976
14 weeks (nonconsecutive)
Initially, Stevie Wonder had no plans to make his follow-up album to Fulfillingness First Finale a two-record set. “I knew that I wanted the album to be different than the previous things that I had done. I knew that I had a lot of material and I was still writing stuff,” he says. When Wonder came to the realization that the album would have to be a two-record set, he discussed it with Motown founder Berry Gordy. “He said, ‘You’re crazy. That’s ridiculous, but go ahead and do it.'”
With Gordy’s approval, Wonder went wild. He didn’t just stop with a two-album set. Upon its completion, the double-album was packaged with a bonus four-song, 7-inch EP. In all, the album included 21 new original songs. Songs in the Key of Life, the music flowed from Wonder. “It was a case me living life and letting life encourage music,” he says.
With Wonder approaching a career-high level of popularity, the completion of Songs in the Key of Life, which was two years in the making, was eagerly anticipated, even by those involved in the recording process. “Gary Olazabal and John Fischbach, the two engineers who worked on it with me, were very patient,” Wonder says. “Everyone kept asking us when were we going to be finished and I just kept saying, ‘We’re almost finished.’ One day Gary went out and had a T-shirt made that said, ‘We’re almost finished.'”
While the album was in the making, Wonder signed a new seven-year pact with Motown, reportedly worth $13 million. At the time, Wonder was the highest-paid performer in pop music.
And Wonder worked hard for the money. At times, he spent as many as 48 hours straight in the studio. “That’s not really that hard to do,” Wonder says. “I’d start on a Sunday afternoon and I’d be on a roll and before I knew it, it would be Tuesday.”
When the album was finally completed, fans and critics agreed it was worth the wait. One track, “Sir Duke” was a homage to Duke Ellington and other artists who paved the way for Wonder. “There’s just so many great musicians who have made a contribution,” he says. “I called the track ‘Sir Duke’ because Duke Ellington was so progressive and innovative.”
Another track, “Isn’t She Lovely,” was written for a child Wonder’s second wife, Yolanda, was carrying at the time. “We kept talking about what sex the baby would be and I just knew it would be a girl,” he says. “I wrote that on the Dream Machine, which was one of the first keyboards that had eight voices.”
Ironically, “I Wish,” the first single released from the album, was the last song Wonder completed for the album. “I wrote that on a Saturday in the summer of 1976 right after the Motown picnic,” he says. “The song was inspired by the fact we were having so much fun. I came back to the studio and wrote that song. When I laid it down, it felt really good. I knew that it was the hit for the album.”
Wonder’s hunch that the autobiographical song would be a hit was correct. The track, featuring Wonder’s sister Renee Hardaway calling him a “nasty boy,” went on to become Wonder’s fifth number Number One single on January 22, 1977.
Songs in the Key of Life didn’t need a hit single to push it to the summit. On October 16, 1976, it became only the third album — after Elton John’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy and Rock of the Westies — to debut at Number One. It was also Wonder’s third Number One album.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of October 16, 1976
1. Songs in the Key of Life, Stevie Wonder
2. Silk Degrees, Boz Scaggs
3. Frampton Comes Alive!, Peter Frampton
4. Fly Like an Eagle, Steve Miller Band
5. Hasten Down the Wind, Linda Ronstadt