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Originally released as two LPs with a bonus seven-inch EP, Stevie Wonder's 106-minute 1976 opus, Songs in the Key of Life, is the crowning achievement of Seventies pop's grand aspirations. Early in the decade, Wonder demanded creative control from his label, Motown, and the result was a string of smash LPs -- 1972's Talking Book, 1973's Innervisions and 1974's Fulfillingness' First Finale. Only twenty-six years old, Wonder slowed his flow of hits to negotiate a $13 million contract and then made good on the deal with... Read More Songs, his most ambitious and successful album ever. While engaging a slew of overdubbed instruments, Wonder nurtured his ongoing synthesizer affair, mimicking a sophisticated string quartet to highlight the horrors of "Village Ghetto Land" or laying down a warm bed of spongy keys for his baby-celebrating "Isn't She Lovely." Satisfying a disco-fueled hunger for lengthy dance cuts, he also jammed with George Benson, Herbie Hancock and other jazz A-listers on gospel-funk tracks like "Another Star" and "As." Veering from Duke Ellington ("Sir Duke") to childhood ("I Wish") to multicultural history lessons ("Black Man"), nostalgia addicts ("Pastime Paradise") and beyond, Wonder created a musical galaxy that encompassed the personal, the political and the spiritual. Songs did all this and posted Backstreet Boys-like sales numbers: Blockbuster albums would follow, but none could match Wonder's combination of commercial success, critical praise and musical scope.
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