Which is a shame for me, as they're brilliant, imaginative, influential, rich, joyful, eclectic, thought-provoking, without direct comparison. Stevie Wonder's early-70s is surely one of the very greatest prolonged creative spurts in the history of popular music, alongside Bob Dylan's mid-60s and not much else for consistency and prolificness.
Songs in the Key of Life was the culmination of this - almost 40 years ago. Incredibly (even though it was itself considered a long delayed album), this was his fifth studio album in four years, and in the time since he has only completed five more full studio albums (notwithstanding film soundtracks and such like). It's not true to say it's all been cack since then - there's plenty to like on Hotter than July, from 1980, but it is safe to say that Stevie spent the vast majority of his creative juices in that period.
Though it's not like he'd been quiet before then. As a Motown child prodigy, he'd released several hit albums in his teens, though not breaking too far from the Motown blueprint. It was in the early 70s, tentatively with 'Where I'm Coming From', then with 'Music of My Mind' that he seized control of his career and wrote himself into music history.
Listening to Stevie's most famous 60s hits next to his 70s work, though I'm normally a gigantic fan of the simple Motown magic compared to 70s MOR, smooth soul/funky jams etc, you can't help but hear the quite enormous leap he made. It really is the leap from black and white to colour, it's as simple as that.
Colour. Has there ever been an artist whose music is so associated with colour as Stevie Wonder? I've never considered myself the slightest bit synaesthetic, but listening to these albums, the colour bursts into my ears, like Pet Sounds, like the Furries, like Joanna Newsom, not like the Strokes or Otis Redding or The Smiths - don't get me wrong, a lot of the greatest films are black and white, but Stevie Wonder's music of the 70s is kaleidoscopic, technicolor, that's just how it is.
It's explicit in some of his greatest songs and greatest lyrics too (for all that there was the very occasional clumsy lyric, he was really a tremendous writer of beautiful words), from 'Golden Lady' to the glorious 'Visions' - "I'm not one who makes believe, I know that leaves are green, They only change to brown when autumn comes around". You don't need me to point out the poignancy.
'Songs in the Key of Life' is the big one, the final statement from a great artist's greatest period. You rather make yourself a hostage to fortune with a title like that. Does this immense double album live up to its premise? I've never quite been sure.
Its critical standing is unquestioned as is the fact that it was also a phenomenal commercial success. There are enough people who know what they're talking about who consider it their favourite album of all time, but perhaps for me the streamlined perfection and poignancy of Innervisions is preferable.
I've never quite got on board with the second half, never been entirely sold on 'As' (perhaps the problem was that I heard George Michael and Mary J Blige do it before Stevie) or Isn't She Lovely, found Black Man a little cheesy, gave up on Another Star a little way through too often. Perhaps this is carping, and perhaps indicative of the fact that, as I fell out with Stevie Wonder after the summer of 2000 passed, I didn't then accept Songs in the Key of Life on its own terms, and it was hence permanently etched in my mind as a glorious failure. I've recently listened to the ones that were a turn-off all those years ago, like Summer Soft, Have a Talk With God, and Ngiculela, and just thoroughly enjoyed them.
And anyway, the first half contains, in order, Sir Duke, I Wish, Knocks Me Off My Feet, Pastime Paradise. Ridiculous.
Still, I wonder if I will keep on listening to Stevie Wonder and Songs in the Key of Life now, after their recent forced rediscovery. Or will I just move on to the next one in alphabetical order and leave him behind again? I think it's more likely to be Talking Book and Innervisions that keep me interested, to be honest, and perhaps I have unfinished business with Music of My Mind and Fulfilingness' First Finale, which I bought from King Creosote for a fiver each in September 2000 when my Wonderlust was already on the wain, and never really believed in. There are no songs from those two albums on this wonderful compilation of Stevie Wonder, which, if I were using it to soundtrack the goings-on of a friend of mine, I'd call 'Songs in the Life of Key'. Oh.
Sir Duke
All In Love is Fair
Knocks Me Off My Feet
For Once in My Life
Blame it on the Sun
He's Misstra Know-it-All
Visions
Saturn
Livin' for the City
I Believe When I Fall in Love With You It Will Be Forever
Superstition
I Wish
Master Blaster
As
You are the Sunshine of My Life
Uptight (Everything's All Right)
Happy Birthday to You
Tomorrow Robins Will Sing
Signed, Sealed, Delivered
Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing
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