Stevie Wonder released four previously unreleased recordings from the sessions for Songs in the Key of Life on Monday, September 28, exactly 50 years after the album first appeared. His record label, Universal Music, said the four-track EP was personally selected by Wonder. The release gives listeners new material from one of the most celebrated periods of the American musician’s career.
The original album arrived on September 28, 1976, and later won the Grammy Award for album of the year. It includes Sir Duke, Isn’t She Lovely and As. The Library of Congress added it to the US National Recording Registry in 2005, a measure of its lasting cultural importance. The anniversary release draws directly from the sessions that produced that album.
The new EP contains It’s Easier, My Life Story of Love, I Can See the Sun in Late December and I’m Into Livin’. Universal Music said the recordings had not previously been officially released. The Guardian also reported the release and described the songs as material from the original album sessions. The four tracks are presented as an EP rather than as a replacement for the 1976 album.
Wonder chose the recordings himself, according to Universal Music. John Fischbach and Gary O Adante, engineers who worked on the original album, recently mixed the tracks for the new edition. That connection to the original production brings the archival recordings to audiences while preserving their link to the musicians and studio work of the 1970s.
In a statement released by the label, Wonder said the songs reflected ideas and feelings he explored while making the album, although they did not make the original release. The decision to publish them for the anniversary offers an additional view of how the project developed. The label did not describe the EP as a newly recorded studio album.
The release precedes a tour on which Wonder plans to perform Songs in the Key of Life in full. Universal Music said the shows begin on October 13 in Birmingham, England, continue through other European cities and the United Kingdom, and then move to the United States in November and December. The EP and the concerts form the announced public celebration of the album’s 50th year.
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