Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Stevie WonderEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2000-05-02
Music Label: Motown
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
- 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
- Isn't She Lovely
- Joy Inside My Tears
- Black Man
- Ngiculela/Es Una Historia/I Am Singing
- If It's Magic
- As
- Another Star
- Saturn
- Ebony Eyes
- All Day Sucker
- Easy Goin' Evening (My Mama's Call)
Free Music Notes for Songs in the Key of Life
Free Music Review: ....stevland morris's zenith apex....
Hit: 5 Stars
This was an exciting time for me as a twelve going on thirteen year old kid when this album was released in the fall of 1976.It brings back exciting memories because my dad was just as excited as I was when he bought this double album for me at Sam's Record Shop and when we got in the car,my dad was excited and proud to buy this classic album for me because he knew how much I loved Stevie Wonder's incredible music.
Stevie Wonder's 1976 double album 'Songs In The Key Of Life' is the zenith apex of his brilliant career.Wonder was guaranteed a 13 million dollar contact which was unprecedented at the time,and a very smart business move by Motown Chairman Berry Gordy.Of the liberties it gave Wonder,he now has the power to not work under record company pressure and release product at his own timetable.The original title of the double album was entitled,'Thank You For Letting Me Into Your Home' and was to have been released in 1975,but it failed to appear.When Wonder finally released it in October,1976 it was retitled 'Songs In The Key Of Life' and the rest is history.
Our musical legend opens his classic double album with a warning:'Love's In Need Of Love Today'which opens with Wonder's gospel acapella voices which soothes the listener as Wonder's mild vocals sends out the message:good morn or evening friends/here's your friendly announcer/i've got serious news to pass on to everybody/what i'm about to say could mean the world's disaster/could change your joy and laughter to tears and pain...The song is an urgent cry for hate in the world to stop and let love rule and for us to just give the world love.'Have A Talk With God' is one of Wonder's most astounding songs in his spiritual catalogue.The song's heavenly message is when you are feeling bad or good,have GOD in your heart and mind.Wonder's key lyrics in the song:'well he's the only free psychiatrist that's known throughout the world/for solving the problems of all menwomenlittleboysandgirls/when you feel your life's too hard,just go have a talk with God'...The song was co-written by Stevie and his brother Calvin Hardaway.Wonder plays all instruments in the song.
'Village Ghetto Land' which was co-written with Gary Byrd is an opera landscape of world horrors.In the song,Wonder takes us the listener on a tour of the less fortunate:the people at the bottom of our world spectrum.Stevie is the sole musician in the song which also has symphonic influences in it.However,the most disturbing depressing lyric in the song from the verse:'families buying dogfood now/starvation roams the streets/babies die before they're born/infected by the grief'...'Contusion'is a fast paced jazzfunk Wonder instrumental.'Contusion'in which Wonder stated that the song was inspired by his automobile accident in 1973.He wrote the jazzfunk instrumental in the hospital while recovering from the accident.For 'Contusion' Wonder had his band Wonderlove with him on the cut.'Sir Duke'has a ragtime influence from the roaring twenties as Wonder pays tribute to jazz pioneers and plays keyboard on the track and is joined by his backing band Wonderlove.The cut ends quickly and 'I Wish' appears on at breathtaking speed.The song celebrates the joys of Wonder's youth.The cut is a swift moving groove of feel good funk(including Wonderlove)with a hot rhythm section and fiery blaring horns.Wonder's sister,Renee Hardaway provided funky background vocals alongside her legendary brother.
'Knocks Me Off My Feet'is the first ballad on the album and Wonder reverts back to his oneman persona.A romantic ballad with the woman of his dreams.A perfect lovevisual backdrop:'I see us in the park/strolling the summer days of imaginings in my head/and words from our hearts/told only to the wind felt even without being said/but there's sumptin'bout your love/that makes me weak and knocks me off my feet'...'Pastime Paradise'is the second spiritual track alongside 'Have A Talk With God' that includes a social message as well.In the song,Wonder attacks the evils of the world and by song's end,there are solutions to the world's problems:'They keep telling of the day/when the saviour of love will come to stay/tell me who of them will come to be?/how many of them are you and me?/verification of revelations/acclamation/world salvation/vibrations/stimulation/confirmation...to the peace of the world'...For 'Pastime Paradise'Wonder brought in and arranged to have the Hare Krishna Devotees Players who did the chants,played the bells,cowbells,congas and percussion.Wonder also enlisted gospel soul by enlisting The West Angeles Church Of God Choir to provide soulful backing vocals.
'Summer Soft'the second ballad of the album questions the mysteries of love:'Is it sun or snow for you?/but it breaks your heart in two.The track has a musical mixture of a relaxed ballad,moderate uptempo beat all in one song.'Ordinary Pain'is divided in two parts:part one is the more slower relaxed pace,while part two is the angry funk that is it's exhaustive funk conclusion.'Ordinary Pain'is a tale about a cheating lover who feels guilty about his affair when he cheated on his woman.The angered funk vocals of Shirley Brewer with powerful backing vocals provided by Minnie Riperton,Mary Lee Whitney,Deniece Williams and Wonder's ex,Syreeta Wright and angry funk from the Wonderman himself,just blows the roof off the studio!One can only imagine the furious smoke that was left in the studio from this divisive,relaxed angered funk performance as the Wonderfunk assault wouldn't let up from start to finish.
'Isn't She Lovely'is Wonder's tribute to his first born offspring and daughter,Aisha.What many people didn't know including myself is that on the 1996 documentary 'Classic Albums:Songs In The Key Of Life'was that the crying infant baby whom we thought was Aisha was in reality a baby that Wonder knew a doctor friend found and they were able to record the birth of that child.As for the real Aisha,Stevie took home a reel to reel stellar box portable recording machine and told his lover Yolanda(the mother of Aisha)that he wanted to record sounds of Aisha in interaction between Yolanda and Stevie.The song nonetheless is a joyus celebration between baby Aisha,Yolanda and Stevie.
The majestic 'Joy Inside My Tears' is the album's most dramatic loveballad vocal performance and my all time favorite Wonder slowjam.(BARNONE)The track is a cool breezy Wonder classic.A very emotional bone chilling-spine tingling ballad that speaks about life as well as love:'I've always felt that tomorrow is for those who are too much afraid/to go past yesterday and start living for today/I feel that lasting moments are coming far and few between/So I should tell you of the happiness that you bring?/baby that's you-you-you made life's history/you've brought some joy inside my tears'.../Wonder's extended emotions was drained within this incredible track with Susaye Greene providing sweet out of the world dreamy background vocals.
'Black Man'is a historical history lesson.An exhaustive long funk workout that namechecks historical luminaries such as Daniel Hale Williams,Harriet Tubman,Benjamin Banneker,Charles Drew and more.This historical history teaching funk cut is also a teacher call out and student response spectacle.'Ngiculela-Es Una Historia-I Am Singing'is a beautiful upbeat ballad of love sung in three different languages as a universal whole for people of the world to feel the many moods of music whether happy or sad-singing of love from our hearts.'If It's Magic'is a hauntingly beautiful,quiet tender butterfly ballad with Wonder's voice and harmonica enhanced by the beautiful harp playing of Dorothy Ashby.
'As'is Stevie Wonder's ecclesiastical masterpiece of his career:A spiritual revelation of the earth,the universe,the birth of life,the transition of life into the afterworld of eternity.A complexed moderate to emotionally powerful spiritual cut that leaves the listener drained of all emotions.The most touching key paragraph of 'As' is Wonder's own forecast of the afterlife:'As today I know I'm living but tomorrow/could make me the past but that I musn't fear/For I'll know deep in my mind/The love of me I've left behind/Cause I'll be loving you always...'Another Star'is an upbeat spicy latin flavored lovefunk exhaustive number with lyrics detailing about how love can break your heart in two when a relationship ends-but it also celebrates the history of that love:'For you,love might be for you to find,but I will celebrate our love of yesterday/For you there might be another star,but in my heart your melody will stay with me'
'Saturn'is Wonder's musical utopia rocket spaceship out of space odyssey escape from planet earth and it's crimes committed by earthlings done to humankind.Nowhere is it more evident in this track of Wonder's discontent of evil human beings committing horrendous crimes to kind human beings:'We have come here many times before/to find your strategy to peace is war/killing helpless men,women and children that don't even know what they're dying for/we can't trust you when you take a stand/with a gun and bible in your hand/and the cold expression on your face saying give us what we want or we'll destroy...Thus,this leads to Wonder's out of space fantasy travel to the ringed planet of Saturn:'I'm going back to Saturn where the rings all glow/Rainbow,moonbeams and orange snow on Saturn/people live to be two-hundred and five/going back to Saturn where the people smile/don't need cars cause we've learned to fly on Saturn-just to live to us is our natural high'
'Ebony Eyes'is Wonder's mid tempo R&B number that is dedicated to the Black Women and Girls throughout the universe.At the beginning of the track,you could hear young Black Girls happily jumping rope reciting the alphabet.In honor of the beautiful black flower,Wonder's heart gives her the love:'She's a girl that can't be beat/born and raised on ghetto streets/she's a devastating beauty/a pretty girl with ebony eyes...
'All Day Sucker' is a funky R&B hardrock sex rave up about a woman who leads a man on for hot sex-as it is only a mirage as she gives him no sexual satisfaction to his dismay:'I'm an all day sucker,coming to give something to get nothin'/I'm an all day sucker,coming to give somethin' to get none of your love'...leading to an angry onslaught of repetitive 'All Day Sucker' choruses.'Easy Goin'Evening(My Mama's Call)presumably is Wonder's laid back harmonica jazz dedication to his mother,Lula Hardaway which closes the double album in a smooth jazz excursion.
Herbie Hancock was one of many guest star musicians who played on the legendary double album stated:'I felt so proud to be part of a landmark record.I mean,there was nothing like that before.Nothing'.
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