October 2, 2026
This Monday, September 28th, marked the fifty year anniversary of Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life.
I’m excited to present a very special edition of the Something…Series that solely highlights this legendary album, a personal all-time favorite of mine.
This Monday, September 28th, marked the fifty year anniversary of Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life.
I’m excited to present a very special edition of the Something…Series that solely highlights this legendary album, a personal all-time favorite of mine.
SOMETHING OLD
Stevie Wonder - Knocks Me Off My Feet
September 28th, 1976
Stevie Wonder - Knocks Me Off My Feet
September 28th, 1976
If ever there were a song to show off Stevie Wonder’s virtuosic vocal and instrumental talents, his knack for maintaining such a buoyant compositional energy, his lyrical romanticism, and his electrifying key changes… Well, a bunch come to mind that I could name. That’s Stevie: true master of all elements of his craft, who’s been getting better and better every day since childhood. Knocks Me Off My Feet, though, is one perfect example.
By the time it plays on the record, we’re halfway through an enormously successful run of four songs (Sir Duke, I Wish, Knocks Me Off My Feet, and Pastime Paradise — which would go on to be sampled in Coolio’s certified 3x platinum Gangsta’s Paradise). First, Sir Duke’s horns come to a grand finale before the funky bass line of I Wish starts. We haven’t slowed down since Village Ghetto Land, a few tracks behind. But after I Wish comes this serene solo piano refrain, showing off his classically trained fingers. The brief refrain’s last note blends with the start of the rhythm section before Stevie starts to sing. His voice is absolutely soaring, but there’s something that sounds so irresistibly effortless about it, and makes it one of my favorite vocal performances from him. The song eventually picks up the same incredible energy of the last few, especially when the key changes at 2:40.
But look, everyone knows Stevie can sing and play piano. How about showing some appreciation for the rest of the session musicians? Oh, right. There weren’t any.
While there is a colossal list of personnel credits for the album, songs like this one show one small part of what makes this album such a feat, and part of why it deserves such immense praise fifty years later: Stevie did a huge portion of it all on his own. In addition to his own hair-raising layered vocals and electric & acoustic pianos here, he’s also playing the drums and synth bass. The drums in particular are just mind-blowing for how well he could drive the song. Despite having access to the finest session drummers of the time, he didn’t need them.
If given a time machine, witnessing this song be recorded in the studio would be one of my first destinations.
SOMETHING NEW
Stevie Wonder - I Can See The Sun In Late December
September 28th, 2026
Stevie Wonder - I Can See The Sun In Late December
September 28th, 2026
I had the pleasure and honor last year to attend Roberta Flack’s memorial. On our way, my father and I theorized who might be there. Not wanting to get my hopes up, I tried not to grasp on too hard to my dad’s notion that Stevie might, but I kept in mind the definite connection between the two through the little-known song, I Can See The Sun In Late December.
Going back a few years to my miserable first semester of college, I was restricted to a small dorm room while the world collapsed in the pandemic around us. Even the music I was studying, always meant to be my one saving grace, was giving me grief and making me feel wholly inadequate and tragically misguided in the sole passion I believed I had. All I had left for any hope of joy were the songs I didn’t have to play for a grade, didn’t have to explain the theory of, and ideally existed well before I was born. Songs I could simply feel, which is the power of music that’s always meant the most to me.
One day in my room where my cold fingers went numb from open windows, I stumbled upon this video of Stevie performing I Can See The Sun In Late December on a 1974 German TV show. There was nothing else during that period of my life that could have possibly meant more to me. At a time where I felt alone, lost, and abandoned by what I believed to be the essence of who I was, words like these were exactly what I needed to hear:
I bet you you can't even see yourself / ‘Cause when you're lost / Sometimes yourself is hard to find
I bet you you can't even see yourself / ‘Cause when you're lost / Sometimes yourself is hard to find
I see forgotten treasures underneath the sea / Tides that defeat identity / Washing away the beauty that was in your mind
I can hear the sounds you don't remember … Making the perfect melody you left behind
Bet you you can't wish upon a star / 'Cause through your life / Your pride has pushed your dreams aside
Always underlying every word was also the poignant theme of what this blind man can see, and what you cannot see, while you watch his thick framed sunglasses further darken the invisible room he’s in. It is moving beyond words. I listened to it on loops and wished there had been a studio recording, but settled for Roberta Flack’s whopping 13-minute arrangement of it.
Now, to return to last March at Flack’s memorial. Confirming my father’s theory, Stevie Wonder appeared before me. He performed If It’s Magic, another great song from Songs in the Key of Life. And then, making all my most unlikely dreams come true, he performed I Can See the Sun.
This week, he made another far-fetched dream of mine come true: he unvaulted the 50 year old studio recording of the song that existed all along. This made my jaw drop on Monday. So while it’s actually just as old as our “something old,” it’s also “something new.” The release sits on a brand new EP alongside three other previously unheard songs, all of which are luminously brilliant, unsurprisingly.
Please take a moment to listen to this song that has been haunting me for years like it’s never been heard before.
SOMETHING BORROWED
Thelma Houston + Jerry Butler - Joy Inside My Tears (Stevie Wonder)
1963
Thelma Houston + Jerry Butler - Joy Inside My Tears (Stevie Wonder)
1963
To continue previous lyrics themes of love and optimism is Joy Inside My Tears, the second track on side 3. Stevie sings a narrative of a lover making the impossible possible for him, bringing happiness and levity into a sad life. One beautiful lyric, I've always felt that tomorrow is for those who are too much afraid to go past yesterday and start living for today, also paints a hard-hitting picture of procrastination and fear. Stevie’s talents as a composer and musician have always been so startlingly impressive, it’s easy to forget that he’s also a gifted lyricist. So, taking him out of the picture helps isolate each talent a little more.
Here’s a great cover of the ballad in a duet by R&B icons Thelma Houston and Jerry Butler. It gives us a great opportunity to focus on what he brings as a songwriter, giving the microphone and instruments to someone else. While neither the original or this cover were hits, the melody feels completely classic and timeless to my ears.
SOMETHING... IN THE KEY OF LIFE
The Smashing Pumpkins - Blue
1994
The Smashing Pumpkins - Blue
1994
To conclude, I’m presenting one of the greatest songs of all time, and the song that perhaps best encapsulates the theme and title of the album: life. Alternatively, it’s something…for my future daughter.
Aisha Morris, Stevie’s first child, was born on February 2nd, 1975. As he sings about her Arabic name origin in the song, Life is Aisha / The meaning of her name, her birth inspired the side 3 opener, which bleeds ferocious love and an ardor for life. It opens with a real recording of a baby’s first cry during childbirth as the instantly recognizable intro fades in. Like the other love songs we’ve reviewed today, this one contains perhaps the purest love. Stevie expresses the raw feelings of newfound fatherhood.
It is reductive and unnecessary to harp on Stevie’s blindness any more than I already have, but I can’t resist mentioning what a uniquely warm perspective we get from a man who experiences fatherhood with all but one of his senses, and who simultaneously works professionally in the field of only one human sense: sound. As if writing praising lyrics set to music that holds so much beauty and energy wasn’t enough, Stevie utilizes sound bites from real life to create a complete tribute for his daughter. The introductory baby cries and the recording of Aisha playing in the bathtub around 4:50 create a soundscape of raising a young child. The bath sounds, which prompt Stevie to say “get out of the water, baby” are particularly heart-warming. The sound of bath water splashing is weirdly one of my favorites. I always find it incredibly nostalgic and calming. Hearing his aural glimpse of fatherhood reminds me of my own little hands splashing waves and toys floating atop the bubbles.
Even more than my own childhood, it is the song in this world that brings me the most hope and excitement for having children in the future. I have dreamt of especially having a daughter, who I already love as much as Stevie loves Aisha, in spite of not having met her yet.
Those are the feelings that this music evokes, which puts it—more than anything—in the key of life.