In spite of his considerable talents, a vast body of commercially successful recordings spanning the decades and enduring recognition from the time he first appeared on Motown’s Tamla roster as “Little Stevie Wonder” at the age of 11, Stevie Wonder is vastly underrated as a composer and performer. His growth as a songwriter and musician not only helped redefine the sound of “soul” and popular music in the ’60s, but led to a period of deeper, more introspective music in the ’70s resulting in a trilogy of genre-defying albums that remain a benchmark for modern music today. Among those, Songs in the Key of Life is not only the most ambitious, but unfolds as a rich, complex tapestry of ideas and themes that are timeless.
I had the honor of writing an essay about “Songs” for the National Recording Registry, which was inducted in 2005. The piece appears here: https://www.loc.gov/programs/static/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/Songs-in-the-Key-of-Life.pdf