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33⅓ Main Series #42
Songs in the Key of Life
Like all double albums, Songs in the Key of Life is imperfect but audacious. If its titular concern - life - doesn't exactly allow for rigid focus, it's still a fiercely inspired collection of songs and one of the definitive soul records of the 1970s. Stevie Wonder was unable to control the springs of his creativity during that decade. Upon turning 21 in 1971, he freed himself from the Motown contract he'd been saddled with as a child performer, renegotiated the terms, and unleashed hundreds of songs to tape. Over the next five years, Wonder would amass countless recordings and release his five greatest albums - as prolific a golden period as there has ever been in contemporary music. But Songs in the Key of Life is different from the four albums that preceded it; it's an overstuffed, overjoyed, maddeningly ambitious encapsulation of all the progress Stevie Wonder had made in that short space of time.
Zeth Lundy's book, in keeping with the album's themes, is structured as a life cycle. It's divided into the following Birth; Innocence/Adolescence; Experience/Adulthood; Death; Rebirth. Within this framework, Zeth Lundy covers Stevie Wonder's excessive work habits and recording methodology, his reliance on synthesizers, the album's place in the gospel-inspired progression of 1970s R'n'B, and many other subjects.
Zeth Lundy's book, in keeping with the album's themes, is structured as a life cycle. It's divided into the following Birth; Innocence/Adolescence; Experience/Adulthood; Death; Rebirth. Within this framework, Zeth Lundy covers Stevie Wonder's excessive work habits and recording methodology, his reliance on synthesizers, the album's place in the gospel-inspired progression of 1970s R'n'B, and many other subjects.
160 pages, Paperback
First published December 15, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
September 18, 2022
Yes, overwritten and an idiosyncratic take on the album, but filled with facts, analysis and appreciation for one of my favourite musical artists. Very enjoyable.
To be reread in conjunction with in-depth listening.
To be reread in conjunction with in-depth listening.
December 21, 2021
Songs in the key of life is ambitious enough, and holds it´s own in complexity, for it to be explained in such a pretentious way. I suppose Lundy wanted to be as ambitious as the album itself, with the difference that Songs in the key of life is a masterpiece, and this book, although at times is great in information, at others is just plain pretentious. I can´t say it will be my favorite of this series, which I intend to keep reading more of.
April 25, 2019
Another dope book in the 33 1/3 series. I absolutely loved geeking out about this record that I’ve heard for years. Songs in the Key of Life, is a Stevie album that holds such a special place in my heart — like it does for so many. Growing up in a house filled with soul, to parents born in the 60s, this was a part of their early teenage years and it was passed down to us, as it was to them, by their parents. Three generations of my fam have been loving on this album. I grew up with my dad singing Isn’t She Lovely to me and my sister as young girls, so this was a pleasure to read!
Zeth Lundy got all up in there with the details and how Stevie had the foresight to be critical of Berry Gordy’s grip and take control of his musical, financial and artistic destiny.
I liked the deep dive into Stevie’s spiritual practice, his shade-throwing abilities and potential for clairvoyance.
These series are made to be a little pretentious, made for you to fan-girl/fan-boy out to just a little. They’re made extremely well for the detail-oriented geeks and the music nerds, and generally, they do their job. Once you accept that the wording will sometimes be a little uppity, and the author will speak like they know the artist, the ride is always good and worth it and you will pick up a lot of tidbits and information that you didn’t know before. This effort was awesome!
Zeth Lundy got all up in there with the details and how Stevie had the foresight to be critical of Berry Gordy’s grip and take control of his musical, financial and artistic destiny.
I liked the deep dive into Stevie’s spiritual practice, his shade-throwing abilities and potential for clairvoyance.
These series are made to be a little pretentious, made for you to fan-girl/fan-boy out to just a little. They’re made extremely well for the detail-oriented geeks and the music nerds, and generally, they do their job. Once you accept that the wording will sometimes be a little uppity, and the author will speak like they know the artist, the ride is always good and worth it and you will pick up a lot of tidbits and information that you didn’t know before. This effort was awesome!
July 3, 2010
This is one of those little pocket books that's part of an inspired series by different authors. In concept, smart. But execution? Not so much.
While there is some interesting information about the making of this amazing album, the author has overwritten what should have been direct -- and awkwardly so.
Example: "...an asphyxiating shift in grip on his career's windpipe."
Another: "...a spawn of hip shakes and dire physicality, of skin-slipping and identity realignment, malleable as wind tossed hair and defiant as the wind that tosses it."
I mean, COME ON! What IS this??
For music lovers, all we need is a behind-the-scenes look and signposts to indicate the astute observations and intersections of creative forces. You would think pseudo-intellectual babble that reads like a bad college term paper would be anathema.
I read all 151 of these mini-pages because I love Stevie Wonder's music and I deeply respect his creativity and vision, particularly from the early '70s, so in order to learn more I was willing to be forgiving. Somewhat. But just two pages in and I knew this would be an endurance test to glean what I needed despite the pain of reading it.
Ugh. Beware.
While there is some interesting information about the making of this amazing album, the author has overwritten what should have been direct -- and awkwardly so.
Example: "...an asphyxiating shift in grip on his career's windpipe."
Another: "...a spawn of hip shakes and dire physicality, of skin-slipping and identity realignment, malleable as wind tossed hair and defiant as the wind that tosses it."
I mean, COME ON! What IS this??
For music lovers, all we need is a behind-the-scenes look and signposts to indicate the astute observations and intersections of creative forces. You would think pseudo-intellectual babble that reads like a bad college term paper would be anathema.
I read all 151 of these mini-pages because I love Stevie Wonder's music and I deeply respect his creativity and vision, particularly from the early '70s, so in order to learn more I was willing to be forgiving. Somewhat. But just two pages in and I knew this would be an endurance test to glean what I needed despite the pain of reading it.
Ugh. Beware.
December 24, 2014
Some good background on the album, but doesn't sedulously eschew bombastic prolixity and/or hyperverbosity. It's a book about an album about life.
April 7, 2020
“Regardless of length or cosmic scope, these promises made by pop music aren’t exactly hard-fought imitations of life. In other words, it’s doubtful that the singers would do all the terrific and fantastic things they said they would in real life. Does that mean pop music is disingenuous and deceptive? Not really; the songs are what they are, exaggerated representations of what we truly want to hear—that we’re loved and obsessed over by acquaintances and strangers alike. We depend upon pop music to tell us these kinds of things, to feed our most insecure spots with reassurance. One of the unspoken understandings we, as listeners, have with pop music is that we’ll take it at its word as long as it continues to give us its word, no matter how fantastic.”
April 29, 2017
This is a slim volume (151 pages), part of the 33-1/3 series (333.sound.com).
Zeth has lots to say about Songs in the Key of Life. He offers opinions about individual songs, how they fit into the Stevie Wonder world and how they fit into the whole world, both in the lyrics and the music. This album was made when Stevie left Motown, with his large royalty check when he turned 21. He spent lots of time in the recording studio, writing and playing parts on electronic instruments.
Zeth gives the history of each song, from Wonder's own personal viewpoint to the instruments and electronica and singers and sidemen used on each track. I found the whole thing greatly illuminating, disagreeing only with his pronouncement that no future album from Stevie Wonder could bypass this.
Zeth has lots to say about Songs in the Key of Life. He offers opinions about individual songs, how they fit into the Stevie Wonder world and how they fit into the whole world, both in the lyrics and the music. This album was made when Stevie left Motown, with his large royalty check when he turned 21. He spent lots of time in the recording studio, writing and playing parts on electronic instruments.
Zeth gives the history of each song, from Wonder's own personal viewpoint to the instruments and electronica and singers and sidemen used on each track. I found the whole thing greatly illuminating, disagreeing only with his pronouncement that no future album from Stevie Wonder could bypass this.
September 30, 2022
These are fun and you can learn a lot about these albums. Stevie Wonder is often not recognized as the synth wizard he was, but his synth collaborations in his 3 studio tour to produce this album is one of the coolest things. Strong writing, if not a little collegiate, but still it filled in a ton of gaps in my Stevie knowledge. Has me hungry for a legitimate full Stevie Wonder biography.
November 4, 2024
Lundy can certainly write about music, but I’m not sure if he actually likes it. He devotes nearly as much time in this book to tearing down artists as he does complimenting them. And this criticism isn’t limited to Wonder and his contemporaries - Lundy takes pot shots at Rush, Glen Miller, David Bowie, and many others over the course of this book.
The book feels like a piece from a critic more than it feels like a piece from a fan, and the objectivity and balance that helped people make smart choices in the days before streaming makes this a significantly less worthwhile read. Occasionally, Lundy will let his love of the album slip through, but ironically, his writing on Wonder’s passion project is pretty passionless.
The book feels like a piece from a critic more than it feels like a piece from a fan, and the objectivity and balance that helped people make smart choices in the days before streaming makes this a significantly less worthwhile read. Occasionally, Lundy will let his love of the album slip through, but ironically, his writing on Wonder’s passion project is pretty passionless.
March 26, 2022
I am in doubt deciding if this is criminally or just badly overwritten.
This book is only for the diehard fans of Stevie’s most important album. But only if you are not a fan of good and concise writing or if you are seeking a lot of actual information about the recording. Also, if you object to the overuse of contrived adjectives, this may not be a good read for you. At times it feels as if the author were singing the best songs totally off key.
Warning: Contains an interminable collection of weird sentences in the guise of a song-by-song review, with jewels like this: “At its very heart, Songs is about experience on a visceral level, not just a series of dictated tutorials. It’s about significant emotional transitions, life-altering epiphanies, ritualistic passages from ignorance to enlightenment. Such are the moments that count the most, the parts of the equation where the math implies more than a simple solution. Songs bulks up on a multitude of existential characteristics, but the thick of it accounts for how those characteristics unite, how they create eternal knowledge through dissemination and action. (…)
“Rock musicians, perhaps adjacently endowed with the gutsy resourcefulness of Miles Davis’s genre-blurring, took it upon themselves to “brain” up the utilitarian one-two-three-four-five blues-based progressions that had so effectively served them since the days of Sun Records. In fact, it was members of Davis’s progressive late-60s combos, like Chick Corea and John McLaughlin, who launched influential jazz-rock crossovers Return to Forever and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, respectively. They would beget poppier and gaudier travesties, Rush and ELP and the Jeff Beck Band, groups that subsisted on flashy techie-isms bereft of humor and/or humility.
(…)
“There’s a sizeable portion of the album that aspires, in solidarity, to acclimatize to the washed-out void of eternity, to become one of those plentiful echoes that ricochet into the far-off places we can’t rationally fathom. Perhaps the cover art visually encodes that uncountable richness into its design, or perhaps it suggests, in a meta kind of way, that though an album about life is big, LIFE is even bigger.”
My eyes hurt just from having re-read what I wrote.
This book is only for the diehard fans of Stevie’s most important album. But only if you are not a fan of good and concise writing or if you are seeking a lot of actual information about the recording. Also, if you object to the overuse of contrived adjectives, this may not be a good read for you. At times it feels as if the author were singing the best songs totally off key.
Warning: Contains an interminable collection of weird sentences in the guise of a song-by-song review, with jewels like this: “At its very heart, Songs is about experience on a visceral level, not just a series of dictated tutorials. It’s about significant emotional transitions, life-altering epiphanies, ritualistic passages from ignorance to enlightenment. Such are the moments that count the most, the parts of the equation where the math implies more than a simple solution. Songs bulks up on a multitude of existential characteristics, but the thick of it accounts for how those characteristics unite, how they create eternal knowledge through dissemination and action. (…)
“Rock musicians, perhaps adjacently endowed with the gutsy resourcefulness of Miles Davis’s genre-blurring, took it upon themselves to “brain” up the utilitarian one-two-three-four-five blues-based progressions that had so effectively served them since the days of Sun Records. In fact, it was members of Davis’s progressive late-60s combos, like Chick Corea and John McLaughlin, who launched influential jazz-rock crossovers Return to Forever and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, respectively. They would beget poppier and gaudier travesties, Rush and ELP and the Jeff Beck Band, groups that subsisted on flashy techie-isms bereft of humor and/or humility.
(…)
“There’s a sizeable portion of the album that aspires, in solidarity, to acclimatize to the washed-out void of eternity, to become one of those plentiful echoes that ricochet into the far-off places we can’t rationally fathom. Perhaps the cover art visually encodes that uncountable richness into its design, or perhaps it suggests, in a meta kind of way, that though an album about life is big, LIFE is even bigger.”
My eyes hurt just from having re-read what I wrote.
December 17, 2018
This book is a mess. Perhaps because I compare it to the other in this series I've read -- which met my expectations -- I was disappointed by how the tracks on the album weren't discussed in the order they appear. Further, I absorbed this via the audio book so the author's apparent pursuit of setting a record for number of footnotes made for a very choppy read. I'll settle for the Classic Albums episode to educate me on this most excellent album.
April 26, 2016
Quick summary:
+ background info on Wonder, Motown, etc.
- verbose
+ contained a few interesting reflections on the creative life of an artist and music structure
- too much bashing of other music
+ Even if I didn't agree with a lot of what Lundy puts forth here, it at least got me to clarify my own particular tastes and feelings about music.
+ background info on Wonder, Motown, etc.
- verbose
+ contained a few interesting reflections on the creative life of an artist and music structure
- too much bashing of other music
+ Even if I didn't agree with a lot of what Lundy puts forth here, it at least got me to clarify my own particular tastes and feelings about music.
August 31, 2012
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Lundy was moving and very engaging as a writer and he did his homework on this album (as well as doing his homework on Motown and rock and roll). The book made me fall even more in love with the album.
November 18, 2007
I do like this book, but it does disappear up it's own wazoo occasionally. Still a very interesting look into a truly amazing album. A bit pretentious though.
January 17, 2011
Larded over with needlessly intricate analogies and florid turns of phrase, and bearing little apparent emotional connection to the music. A huge disappointment.
December 21, 2024
Nice to see this album get a book in the 33 1/3 series. It deserves the analysis and respect. There are nuggets of insight about where Stevie was in his life during its creation, and how this album builds on his amazing albums of the early '70s. There is also some interesting discussion of the lyric and musical structure of the different songs. But it is a slog to wade through the author's writing style to get to the information and insight you want. His writing is so pretentious and overblown to be at times unreadable. And that is too bad. I often had to re-read passages several times to try to get his point. A simple declarative sentence would have been a welcomed change a lot of the time. I've encountered this 'Hey, look at me. I'm an intellectual!' writing style a few other times in the 33 1/3 series. The editors, and/or publisher, of the series need to a better job of reining in their authors when needed, and reminding them that people are reading the books because they are interested in the albums. No one is reading the books to be schooled on how to write overly complicated and self-important graduate-school-type theses.
July 5, 2023
This series of books has an undeniable allure for me, but my experience with the ones I've read has been mostly negative, & sadly this entry did nothing to dispel that impression. It starts promisingly, with the bizarre scene of Stevie's unveiling the album to a group of journalists in the incongruously bucolic setting of a small town in Western Massachusetts, but speeds downhill from there. Instead of analyzing the record song by song, Lundy breaks it down thematically, under the pompous chapter headings "Birth," "Innocence," "Experience," "Death," & "Transcendence." This works up to a point once you get used to it, & one could make the case for certain songs falling in more than one category, but the real flaw is the pitfall into which so many critics fall: too much intellectualizing. By the book's end you get the feeling the author is just filling the space with whatever comes into his mind, from unsubstantiated rumors to barely relevant tangents, & increasingly convoluted sentences. It's almost enough to suck the joy out of one of the most joyous albums of all time.
March 24, 2024
How do you capture all of "life" in a work of art? This is the question that drove Stevie Wonder in creating his 1976 masterpiece, and which drives Zeth Lundy in his analysis of this landmark work of music. Dividing chapters thematically into "Birth", "Innocence", "Experience", "Death", and "Transcendence", Lundy contextualize the eclectic journey of Songs in the Key of Life, while also touching on Wonder's childhood and young adult years, Motown, synthesizers, poetry, spirituality, and many other topics that inform the kaleidoscope of the album. An essential read with an appropriate depth and joyousness for a classic album.
August 24, 2023
Always enjoyed this album, never understood it was the high water mark of Wonder's career. I grew up with it as the background to trips and livingroom evening soundtracks. It's sort of always been a part of my life, but this volume does a great job of contextualizing it in the canon of Wonder's other works and seminal place in the history of soul and its transitions into new sounds and technologies of the 70s.
So glad I picked up this volume!
So glad I picked up this volume!
July 7, 2020
Increased my appreciation tenfold of someone who I already considered my favorite artist of all time. The scope of this album is inconparable.
February 10, 2023
Excellent analysis of a classic record that deepened my appreciation for not only the album but of the genius artist that created it.
October 4, 2023
"Rock and roll not only says something about masses of people but also says something to them." -Robert Christgau.
Read
January 13, 2024omg this really tested my reading endurance. the most pretentious writing ever, but i love stevie wonder so i persevered (not worth it)
May 5, 2020
A wonderful, timeless, crazy album given a track-by-track review by a huge fan. Stevie's break from Motown is also discussed.
August 18, 2022
I found this one of the better books in this series so far, despite some sections that fall prey to over-writing and some highly tendentious opinions which do little to aid this particular piece. Why? Well, Lundy enters into the huge spirit of this double album + EP and provides some important context without going overboard and minimising the album by stressing the career as a whole. When you read this book, you commune with this album, unlike the Smile book, where that album is almost an afterthought. Here Lundy eschews the track-by-track-in-order approach and instead teases out the different concerns that were driving the music-obsessed Stevie Wonder in 1975-76. It was all in here, a protean wail of an album that absolutely lived up to the hype. Who could have imagined that it would in some ways be the end of the road for this kind of musical seeking?
Lundy actually enters briefly into that theme: how could a 26 year old on such a hot streak in the early 1970s end up making so little music over the next 45 years or so? His argument is that in reality, the brilliant musicians that go further only get a window of a few years and there's something to that. What this argument misses, though, is why such a talented musician who practically lived in the studio just stop the way he did? Does he miss it? Does he still have many musical ideas? Are there any plans to release some of the allegedly hundreds of songs that were recorded during the halcyon days? Because it's hard to reconcile the awesome visionary who made this album (chemical-free), with the maker of Characters (1987) or Conversation Peace (1995). Not to mention The Secret Life of Plants (1979).
And yet, going into the details on each of these grooves is a thrilling exercise. Listening again to the way he uses the banks of voices and synths to make a wild-sounding, multi-layered album while never failing to nail a great chorus is an exercise in, ahem, wonder. And this little book, for all that it strives to impress, is indeed a worthy companion to take along on the ride. Just trying to imagine oneself as one of the journalists invited to the curious listening party in the middle of nowhere, or to second-guess the order of the tracks, or to marvel at the fact that the Michael Sembello playing guitar is the same Michael Sembello who falsetto-husked his way through Maniac on the Flashdance soundtrack and here was all of 19 years old as he paced along with the unstoppable Stevie Wonder.
Lundy actually enters briefly into that theme: how could a 26 year old on such a hot streak in the early 1970s end up making so little music over the next 45 years or so? His argument is that in reality, the brilliant musicians that go further only get a window of a few years and there's something to that. What this argument misses, though, is why such a talented musician who practically lived in the studio just stop the way he did? Does he miss it? Does he still have many musical ideas? Are there any plans to release some of the allegedly hundreds of songs that were recorded during the halcyon days? Because it's hard to reconcile the awesome visionary who made this album (chemical-free), with the maker of Characters (1987) or Conversation Peace (1995). Not to mention The Secret Life of Plants (1979).
And yet, going into the details on each of these grooves is a thrilling exercise. Listening again to the way he uses the banks of voices and synths to make a wild-sounding, multi-layered album while never failing to nail a great chorus is an exercise in, ahem, wonder. And this little book, for all that it strives to impress, is indeed a worthy companion to take along on the ride. Just trying to imagine oneself as one of the journalists invited to the curious listening party in the middle of nowhere, or to second-guess the order of the tracks, or to marvel at the fact that the Michael Sembello playing guitar is the same Michael Sembello who falsetto-husked his way through Maniac on the Flashdance soundtrack and here was all of 19 years old as he paced along with the unstoppable Stevie Wonder.
July 13, 2015
This little paperback book proved to be the perfect summer beach read. It helped me have a much better perspective on an album that I fortunately owned in the late 70's & joined me in my High School & College yrs.
According to music geek Lundy, 'this would be the last time Wonder worked so hard & delivered a product that reflected the toil...it came to him in a dream that beget a concept & a concept that would beget a challenge.'
'The album's aspirations were labyrinthine, it's scope unmappable - an attempt, via melody harmony & rhythm, to document the nuances of existence.' The double-LP set along with a 4 song 7 inch EP & a 24 pg. booklet, debuted at #1 in '76 (the 3rd to do that) & at 14 wks, the 4th longest of the 70's (lasted only by Carole King's '71 Tapestry, Sat. Night Fever's '76 soundtrack & Fleetwood Mac's '77 'Rumors.'
Did you know that little Steveland Morris was born 6 wks premature w/sight but 2 disabled eyes - 1 with a cataract & the other with a dislocated nerve? Did you know that even though Wonder's 1-man-band style left him alone for most of the selections, Herbie Hancock & George Benson played heavily into SitKoL's sound? Did you know that only Harry Nilsson came close to summoning the forgotten allure of childhood innocence?
Wonder was a wonder & I can't wait to listen to this album again now.
According to music geek Lundy, 'this would be the last time Wonder worked so hard & delivered a product that reflected the toil...it came to him in a dream that beget a concept & a concept that would beget a challenge.'
'The album's aspirations were labyrinthine, it's scope unmappable - an attempt, via melody harmony & rhythm, to document the nuances of existence.' The double-LP set along with a 4 song 7 inch EP & a 24 pg. booklet, debuted at #1 in '76 (the 3rd to do that) & at 14 wks, the 4th longest of the 70's (lasted only by Carole King's '71 Tapestry, Sat. Night Fever's '76 soundtrack & Fleetwood Mac's '77 'Rumors.'
Did you know that little Steveland Morris was born 6 wks premature w/sight but 2 disabled eyes - 1 with a cataract & the other with a dislocated nerve? Did you know that even though Wonder's 1-man-band style left him alone for most of the selections, Herbie Hancock & George Benson played heavily into SitKoL's sound? Did you know that only Harry Nilsson came close to summoning the forgotten allure of childhood innocence?
Wonder was a wonder & I can't wait to listen to this album again now.
August 13, 2016
After I read this book, I actually bought the album in question and re-read the book AND made me appreciate the album more. Lundy's volume zeros in on how the album made Stevie Wonder a superstar and a pioneer in hip hop and soul as Songs... had used the latest technology and created some unique sounds which are unrivalled today.
August 29, 2009
Reading this book, I was a bit interested in the story-line, and a little insider info on Stevie, but the book seemed to lack a certain bit of focus overall, which made it really hard to get into. Strong writing, just little to grab you by the reins and pull you along.
Read
October 31, 2014fun book that adds a dimension to listening to songs in the key of life and confirms that stevie wonder is awesome.
January 7, 2023
Always fun to read about this album, but I questioned many of Lundy's conclusions and found the organization (by theme instead of sequence) unhelpful.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews