Stevie Wonder’s new Motown album, Songs in the Key of Life, took 26 months to produce. Last year Wonder took time out to sign the fattest contract in pop history (seven years and $13 million). The most eagerly awaited item of the year, Songs landed in the No. 1 position its first week on the charts. With sales already totaling a phenomenal 1.7 million, the album could well earn Motown most of its $13 million back before year’s end.
The two LPs contain 17 songs, with an overflow 7-in. disc holding four more. As usual, Stevie operates as a virtual one-man music company. Throughout the album, he acts as composer, singer, instrumentalist and producer. Despite his multiple involvement, Songs has all the spontaneity and relaxation of a jumping jamboree. Indeed, there has not been a pop album this good or this diversified since Wonder’s Fulfillingness’s First Finale in 1974. Stevie growls at times like an old delta blues shouter, but for the most part he sings in his distinctive black/white style, which occasionally echoes Paul McCartney or Ray Charles. The broad range of musical styles is equally absorbing: those Beatlesque strings in the austere Village Ghetto Land, the swinging blues underpinnings of Black Man, the Latin glee of Another Star. As Stevie puts it in his Ellingtonian tribute Sir Duke, “Music is a world within itself/With a language we all understand.” Stevie’s many fans would undoubtedly agree.
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