Songs In The Key Of Life ~ Stevie Wonder
It was released in September 1976, and I was 15 years and eleven months old, and I owned it on the day of release. I had saved up money, waited impatiently, the release had been delayed while he remixed and fiddled.
It was a double album, gatefold sleeve, and a huge booklet, included with it was an EP single with four extra songs. Because he just couldn’t stop writing.
This album would go on to sell over 5 million copies in the USA and be ranked 4th in the Rolling Stones top 500 albums of all time. On its release, it spent 13 consecutive weeks at No.1 on the Billboard chart. Stevie Wonder was 26 when it was released. 26!
Over the years, I have owned it in multiple formats, replaced worn-out, damaged, and lost copies. I’m pretty sure I have purchased it at least nine times. I never travel without it, and if I were to die in a car crash, I hope one of its tracks would still be playing in the background when they found my lifeless body.
Knowing my luck, it will be something very uncool, and it will be what I am remembered for. — And as they pulled him from the wreckage, I swear to God he had been playing Abba, yes, of course, Dancing Queen, what else?
The album has been cited as an influence by a long list of artists, and it has been sampled to death. Coolio ~ Gangsta’s Paradise, the riff is from this album. The songs have been covered by all and sundry.
My wife might not realise it, but Knocks Me Off My Feet is one of our songs. To be fair, we have about 92 songs, so it can be hard for her to keep up.
I am playing it now as I write, and 49 years later, I know every single lyric. I don’t remember a single thing from any geography lesson I have been in, but this I can do.
I have played it on planes and trains, in cars, in bed, and in hospital. I have listened to it in America, 600 miles from the North Pole. In India by a pool. In Denmark on a long train journey.
The entire thing lasts one hour and forty-five minutes, so it is a good choice for a long journey or an M25 traffic jam. I usually keep it for when I am driving on my own because I will sing along to it all.
Favourite tracks are I Wish, Knocks Me Off My Feet, If It’s Magic, Joy Inside My Tears.
If Stevie goes before me, I will play it in its entirety and thank God for the awesome talent that is Stevie Wonder and the artistry and creativity that gave me this album so early that it could travel with me throughout my life.
Don’t worry if you don’t get around to listening to it I am pretty sure it will be on heavy rotation in heaven. Especially the track Have A Talk With God.
a blog less ordinary 