Stevie Wonder Performs Songs in the Key of Life in Full on Tour — SkimNews
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- Stevie Wonder kicked off his 50th anniversary tour for Songs in the Key of Life by performing the album in full — an ambition he previously fulfilled on 2014-2015 North American arena dates, with Superstition added as an encore.
- The live band numbered roughly 20 musicians — three percussionists, a string section, five brass players, six backing vocalists, two guitarists, and three keyboard players — and Wonder himself played a harpejji, a stringed instrument not invented when he last released an album.
- The 1976 album was recorded by 108 musicians (eight credited for handclaps) after Wonder signed what was then the biggest recording contract in history in 1975, worth around $230m in today's money, capping a two-year run that included Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, and Fulfillingness' First Finale.
- Paul Simon thanked Wonder in his 1976 best album Grammy acceptance speech for not releasing anything that year and thus giving everyone else a shot at the award.
- Wonder fluffed his solo on Easy Goin' Evening, halted Isn't She Lovely mid-performance and ordered a restart ("Stop!" he cried. "Sue me!"), and stretched All Day Sucker and Black Man into extended funk jams with call-and-response audience participation, while adding Contusion and another instrumental to the album's first half.
- The opening trio — Love's In Need of Love Today, Have a Talk With God, and Village Ghetto Land — depicting mid-70s American inequality and Wonder's consideration of relocating to Ghana for charity work landed as urgently as ever, with the reviewer noting the lyrics "might as well have been written in 2026."
Why it matters: Performing an album widely regarded by Michael Jackson, Elton John, and George Michael as the greatest ever made, in full and live with 20-plus musicians, is a rare cultural event — and the fact that lyrics about American disillusionment written in 1976 still land in 2026 underscores the album's enduring political and emotional relevance alongside its musical one.
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