I was laid out flat on my back, doing my best to avoid moving, when the message came through: "You wanna write about how awesome Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life is?" Of course! I attempted to bolt across the office to the "W" section of my record collection. Then I realized I would be bolting nowhere — not without experiencing significant pain, anyway.
Days earlier I had been incapacitated by the Gods of Irony, punishing me for attempting to exercise after years of sloth. I would not be crouching over my record collection today. Instead I did what any enterprising invalid would do: dialed up Songs on the cosmic jukebox. Then it hit me: I hadn't listened to Songs in the Key of Life — a record that Wonder will play in its entirety when he hits Bridgestone Arena on Tuesday — in sequence in years, maybe decades.
I know that seems weird, but hear me out. I have never owned a CD copy of Wonder's 1976 epic — never even thought about it. When I first discovered Songs in the mid-'90s — a decade in which Wonder didn't have a lot of hits, but had a profound influence on a lot of hitmakers, from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to the GZA — the world was awash in dollar-bin copies of the LP. You couldn't go to a used record store, flea market or thrift store without finding a fistful of tattered, battered copies in every rack. The album was one of the era's biggest — the Frampton Comes Alive of funk! — and when all of those suckers made the switch to silver discs it left plenty of copies for those of us who never fell out of love with vinyl. Those were halcyon years for kids with limited means but unlimited hunger for music knowledge.
Here's the thing about vinyl, though, especially double albums like Songs in the Key of Life: You can choose sides. While the typical party line — usually when deriding the cherry-picking manner most folks consume digital music these days — is that vinyl albums present songs as the artist intended you to hear them, that's only half-true. Records aren't tapes; you don't have to start the beginning. There are a lot of albums, for whatever reason, that just pull the listener towards starting at Side 2.
But Songs in the Key of Life? In the Maloney household, that album starts on Side 3 with the corny, perfect and should-be-played-out-but-never-will-be classic "Isn't She Lovely." It's a sorta sappy entry into an album brimming with heavy concepts and intense emotions — the easy way in, so to speak. And that's only when I'm listening to the record at home. Once it leaves the house, there is no order to Songs in the Key of Life, only a stockpile of party jams ready to blow up the spot.
If there is anything that I've learned in my two decades of DJing, it's that Songs is one of the essential "in case of emergency" records. It doesn't matter if you're at a wedding or in the club: If you see the energy on the dance floor flagging, there is a cut on Songs in the Key of Life that will save the day. Need a super-popular song that will make the crowd and your snobby crate-diggin' buddies happy at the same time? "Pastime Paradise" is your jam, even if some folks are confused by the lack of Coolio. And if you can show me a crowd that can resist the slinky, slippery grooves of "I Wish," I'll ask why you are DJing parties at the morgue. That is the reason Songs in the Key of Life is so awesome — it can be reconfigured in so many ways that it fits with every moment in your life.
Some days you just need to listen to "Have a Talk With God" and its totally bizarre synth lines on repeat for the afternoon. Sometimes you just need to hear Dorothy Ashby pluck her harp strings and your heart strings as Stevie croons on "If It's Magic." In his quest to achieve his own private artistic vision, Wonder created an album that can fulfill almost any emotional want or need. These aren't just songs in the key of life, these songs are life itself — all the challenges, all the joys, all the tension, all the release — distilled into brief moments of exceptional potency.
As I lay there on the floor nursing my first case of old-man back, listening to the album as the artist intended, recounting all of the moments when Songs saved the day or soothed my soul, I realized that another of those moments was happening. Wonder didn't just make an album of great tunes. He created one of the most honest and enduring portraits of what it means to be human, regardless of the listening order.
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