The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Stevie Wonder · written, arranged and produced by Stevie Wonder · Tamla · two LPs and a seven-inch EP, twenty-one tracks, about 105 minutes
Mode
Soul widened to hold jazz harmony, funk, gospel, Latin, a fusion instrumental, a string pastiche and a classroom drill
Mythos
The two paradises and the eternal vow built; the newborn, the remembered child, the ancestors and the far star evoked
Phase
Four sides shaped as stages of a life, the law, childhood and love, the family and history, the world and the vow, with the extra disc as an appendix after the fourth
Presentation
Double album with a bonus seven-inch EP, A Something’s Extra, inside the original package; seventeen tracks and four
Register
Keyboards, synthesiser, harmonica and drums largely played by the author, a tight band and horns, choir and chant; a voice from falsetto to gospel climb
Scale
A life from birth to the vow, a family, a city and its poor, a nation’s history, the sacred and the cosmos, joined by one declared law
Governing Proposition
A soul singer at his commercial height spends two years on a double album and an extra disc, opens it by singing its law before the band is heard, and carries that law, love, through a child’s mischief, a father’s joy, a city’s hunger and a nation’s history to a vow made on the impossible: a panorama whose making is among the finest of its decade and whose length is not always its argument.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record begins with voices and no band. “Love’s in Need of Love Today” opens in close a cappella harmony, and before a single instrument is heard it has stated the law the whole album will claim: that love is what a person, a family, a people and a world are governed by, and that it is in short supply. The song then holds a hushed gravity for seven minutes. A record that will go on for more than a hundred minutes, through a classroom and a ghetto, a bath and a schoolyard, a foreign tongue and a distant star, announces its argument first and plainly, as a sermon announces its text.
Tamla released the album in September 1976, after about two years of recording, from 1974 to 1976. Stevie Wonder wrote, arranged and produced it, and plays much of it himself: keyboards, synthesiser, harmonica and drums. It came as a double LP in four sides, seventeen tracks and about eighty-six minutes, with a bonus seven-inch EP, A Something’s Extra, inside the package: four more tracks and about eighteen minutes. The whole runs about a hundred and five minutes. Later compact discs fold the four tracks of the extra disc onto the end of the second; the content is the same, and the unit here is the package of 1976, with the extra disc read as its appendix, after side four.
The architecture is a panorama laid out in sides. Side one moves from the law to the sacred, to the ghetto, through an instrumental, to the music’s ancestors. Side two is childhood and love, ending in pain. Side three is the family and then history. Side four goes out into other languages, to the vow and to the star. Seven tracks run six minutes or more, about fifty minutes, nearly half the whole, and much of that length is vamp and coda. Two tracks are instrumental. The claim needs breadth, and the double album is how it knows it; the question the record leaves open is whether every minute of the breadth is needed.
Movement II
Two songs disclose by their form. “Village Ghetto Land” sets hunger, violence and abandonment over a courtly string pastiche, played on a synthesiser made to stand in for a string section, so that the comfort of the sound is the indifference of those who hear it. “Pastime Paradise” sets those who live in the past against those who live for the future over a dark ostinato, and it reaches the dread side of the sublime, which the record rarely visits.
“Pastime Paradise” also builds the record’s myth. It sets two paradises against each other, the lost one of those who dwell on what was and the promised one of those who wait on what will be, and it ends with a choir and a chant of Hare Krishna devotees joined in procession, so that the second paradise becomes a real gathering, a congregation of the hopeful, not an image. Here the archetype bears load. “Black Man” extends the social argument to history: a classroom drill in call and response, teaching that the making of America belongs to every race.
That is the record’s disclosure at its fullest, and the limit is in what surrounds it. Much of the album states rather than discloses. “Have a Talk with God” and the opening song offer sermon and assurance; the love songs affirm more than they uncover; “Black Man” is a lesson, not a discovery. The governing statement, that love is the law, is affirmed rather than brought into the open. Two or three songs in twenty-one find something by their form; the rest declare it, and declaration is not unconcealment. The archetypes beyond these songs are evoked, the newborn, the remembered child, the far star, and rarely bear weight past the song that names them.
Movement III
“Sir Duke” closes side one by naming the music’s ancestors, and its horn line is played in unison as a single breath of joy. The record binds itself to its lineage there, and to its childhood in “I Wish”, whose bass figure and keyboard interlock carry the remembered boy of the song, “a little nappy-headed boy”, into the present. The making is the record’s foundation: Wonder’s harmony, in the chromatic turns of “As”, the changes of “Knocks Me Off My Feet” and “Summer Soft”, and the voicings of the opening song; his arranging; his own playing; a band that plays tight; and a voice that runs from the falsetto of “If It’s Magic” to the gospel climb of “As”.
The making has costs, and they fall across a share of the record. The long vamps are under-edited. Several mixes are crowded, dense and boxy on the longer tracks. Some synthesiser timbres are generic for 1976, and two tracks of the extra disc, “Ebony Eyes” and “All Day Sucker”, are routine. The making stands level with Low’s, whose making is its content, and three tenths below Kind of Blue’s. It is load-bearing throughout the double album, and it is the record’s strongest figure.
The turn the record takes is of scale and range, not of direction. Its inheritance is Motown soul and Wonder’s own run of four records from 1972 to 1974, where the self-produced, self-played album and the synthesiser in soul had already been made, and Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On had made soul a vehicle of social argument in 1971. This record enlarges a proven path: it carries jazz harmony, Latin, a song in three languages, a fusion instrumental, a classroom drill and gospel into one soul album, at the singer’s commercial height, after two years of delay. The stake was real; the swerve had been made before. What the record did with the path reached far: the self-made records of Prince, the neo-soul of the 1990s, and the sampling of hip-hop, which built Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” on “Pastime Paradise” and Will Smith’s “Wild Wild West” on “I Wish”.
Movement IV
Side three is the family and then history, and it opens with a father’s record of a birth. “Isn’t She Lovely” is set over the sound of a bath and an infant’s voice, and the newborn is held as blessing in the plainest terms. It is the record at its warmest, and it is also where the record’s length is clearest. The song is complete at three minutes; a harmonica solo extends it to more than six. “Joy Inside My Tears” runs long after it, and “Black Man” longer still. The whole side is three tracks.
The subtractive test bites hard here, because the length is chosen and announced. Some parts are compelled: the opening must open, the two social songs carry what nothing else carries, “As” is the summit, and “Sir Duke” and “I Wish” bind the music to its lineage and its childhood. But “Another Star” holds its Latin vamp for minutes past its turn, “Ordinary Pain” runs long, “If It’s Magic” is slight, and two tracks of the extra disc could go without loss. In perhaps a fifth of the whole, the material is permitted rather than compelled. That is the record’s lowest figure, and it clears the bar of necessity by two tenths.
The form carries the claim, and it is uneven within it. The sides are shaped as stages of a life, and inside the songs form carries meaning: the string pastiche, the dark ostinato, the long crescendo. But within each side the order is often exchangeable; “Contusion”, a fast fusion instrumental of guitar and synthesiser in unison, is a bridge more than a stage; and the extra disc is an appendage whose four tracks the frame does not require. One law joins elements as distant as that instrumental, a song sung in Zulu, Spanish and English, and a father’s song over a bath, and they obey it more often than not. The law is made in words, though, and not built into every part.
Movement V
“As” is the record’s summit and its vow. It is built over a long gospel crescendo, the voice climbing over the choir, and its words, beginning “as around the sun”, set out a list of impossible conditions of the natural order under which the singer’s love will still hold. The list rises past the point where the song might end, and the climb goes on. The oldest form of the love song, the eternal vow, is built here and not merely evoked, and the height of the record, which is mostly warm, of praise and delight, reaches grandeur in these seven minutes as it does nowhere else.
Side four goes out from it into the world: “Ngiculela” in three languages before it, “Another Star” after, its vamp outlasting its turn. Then the extra disc: the far utopia of “Saturn”, the routine “Ebony Eyes” and “All Day Sucker”, and the instrumental “Easy Goin’ Evening (My Mama’s Call)”, which brings the mother into a record that has held the newborn, the child and the father. What the whole holds is wide: consciousness and love, the family, the city and its poor, history and the nation, the sacred, the music’s own past, the natural order, the world beyond English, the cosmos. Labour is absent and the state glimpsed, and the orders arrive song by song, joined by statement more often than by structure.
Fifty years have kept the songs in the air: “Sir Duke”, “I Wish”, “Isn’t She Lovely” and “As” in broadcast, in performance and at weddings and funerals, and the record studied by musicians as a school. It is heard more as songs than as a whole, and some of its surface, the synthesiser strings and the dense mixes, is of its year. It stands at 8.4, level with Prince’s Purple Rain and Talking Heads’ Remain in Light and a tenth below the Beatles’ double album of 1968. What holds it below the summit is not its making or its survival. It is the depth of its disclosure and its myth, a swerve made mostly on the records before it, and a length that is not always its argument.
Act III · The Twelve
The subtractive test bites hard, because the record is long by choice and says so. Some parts are required. “Love’s in Need of Love Today” must open, its a cappella start stating the law before any band is heard; “Village Ghetto Land” and “Pastime Paradise” carry the social argument and nothing else does; “As” is the summit and the vow. But seven tracks run six minutes or more, nearly half the whole, and the length is not always the argument. “Another Star” holds its vamp for minutes past its turn, “Isn’t She Lovely” extends a harmonica solo over a song complete at three minutes, “If It’s Magic” is slight, and two tracks of the extra disc could go without loss. Permitted rather than compelled in perhaps a fifth of the whole: that is what holds the record’s lowest figure.
Score: 7.7 / 10
The disclosure can be stated: a whole life, from a child’s mischief to a parent’s joy to a city’s hunger, is governed by one law, love, and that law is social and political as much as private. Two songs disclose by form and are credited fully. “Village Ghetto Land” sets hunger, violence and abandonment over a courtly string pastiche, so that the comfort of the sound is the indifference of those who hear it. “Pastime Paradise” sets those who live in the past against those who live for the future over a dark ostinato. What holds it below the bar: much is stated as sermon and assurance, the love songs affirm more than they uncover, and “Black Man” is a lesson, not a discovery.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Height comes often and from several directions. “As” is the summit: a vow of love built over a long gospel crescendo, the voice climbing over the choir, with “as around the sun” opening a list of impossible conditions that rises past the point where the song might end. “Love’s in Need of Love Today” begins in close a cappella harmony and holds a hushed gravity for seven minutes. “Sir Duke” lifts by its unison horn line, a single breath of joy; “I Wish” by its bass and its release; “Knocks Me Off My Feet” by the voice. “Pastime Paradise” reaches the dread side. Held below the top: the height is mostly warm, grandeur is rare outside “As”, and the long vamps and the extra disc sit level rather than rise.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Myth is evoked often and built in two places. “Pastime Paradise” builds the two paradises, the lost one of those who dwell on the past and the promised one of those who wait on the future, and its closing procession of choir and chant makes the second a real gathering, not an image. “As” builds the eternal vow, the oldest form of the love song, on impossibilities of the natural order. Around these the archetypes are evoked: the newborn as blessing, the remembered child of “I Wish”, “a little nappy-headed boy”, the ancestors named in “Sir Duke”, the far utopia of “Saturn”. What holds it below the bar: the life-cycle frame is laid by the sequence, not built as one structure, and the archetypes rarely bear load beyond their songs.
Score: 8.1 / 10
The inheritance is Motown soul and above all Wonder’s own run since 1972, Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions and Fulfillingness’ First Finale, where the self-produced, self-played album and the synthesiser in soul had already been made. The turn here is of scale and range: a double album with an extra disc carries jazz harmony, Latin, a song in Zulu, Spanish and English, a fusion instrumental, a string pastiche, a classroom drill and gospel into one soul record. The stake was real, two years’ delay and the risk of sprawl before the largest audience in soul. What holds it well below the bar: the decisive swerve was made on the earlier records, and Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On (1971) had already made soul a vehicle of social argument.
Score: 8.1 / 10
The sequence is counted here, once. Change the form and the record loses its central claim, that one law runs through all of a life: the claim needs breadth, and the panorama is how it knows it. The sides are shaped. Side one moves from the a cappella law to the sacred, to the ghetto, through an instrumental, to the music’s ancestors; side two is childhood and love, ending in pain; side three is the family and then history; side four goes out into other languages, to the vow and to the star. Inside the songs form carries meaning: the string pastiche, the long crescendo of “As”, the dark ostinato. What holds it: within the sides the order is often exchangeable, “Contusion” is a bridge more than a stage, and the extra disc is an appendage the frame does not require.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Evidence over fifty years. Musicians keep returning to the record as a school: the harmony of “As” and “Knocks Me Off My Feet”, the horn line of “Sir Duke”, the bass of “I Wish” and the voicings across the double album are studied and played, and “Sir Duke”, “Isn’t She Lovely” and “As” are standards. Later generations have reheard it by reuse: “Pastime Paradise” became the frame of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” (1995), and “I Wish” the frame of Will Smith’s “Wild Wild West” (1999), each finding something the original had not spent. The depth is more formal than semantic. The words of most songs yield little more on a tenth hearing than on the first; what keeps yielding is the music, and the figure is held there.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The field is the soul, rhythm and blues and pop of the 1970s. The intrinsic force: the record showed at the largest scale that a soul album could be the work of one author who wrote, played, arranged and produced, joining jazz harmony and the synthesiser to the popular song, and that such a record could hold the centre of popular music. Part of that force belongs to the earlier records and to Gaye, and the record consolidates more than it reorganises. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the self-made records of Prince, the harmonic ambition of Michael Jackson’s records with Quincy Jones, the neo-soul of the 1990s and the sampling of hip-hop, which built two of its best-known records on this one, stand in its line, and several songs passed into the standard repertoire.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Survival is weighed over fifty years, on form, then presence, then fabric. The form survives whole: the package has been reissued complete, with the four tracks of the extra disc folded onto later editions. Presence is continuous and among the widest of its decade: “Sir Duke”, “I Wish”, “Isn’t She Lovely” and “As” have stayed in broadcast, in performance and at weddings and funerals, and the record is played whole and studied. The charge: it is heard more as songs than as an album of over a hundred minutes, and popularity is presence, not proof. The fabric is partly of its year: the synthesiser strings, some patches and the dense, boxy mixes of the longer tracks date it, though the band and the voice do not. It stands a tenth above Low.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with the words weighed elsewhere, and the making is load-bearing. Wonder’s harmony is the foundation: the chromatic turns of “As”, the changes of “Knocks Me Off My Feet” and “Summer Soft”, the voicings of “Love’s in Need of Love Today”. The arranging is exact: the unison horn line of “Sir Duke”, the bass figure and keyboard interlock of “I Wish”, the synthesiser made into a string section for the two social songs. He plays much of it himself, and the band plays it tight. The voice is among the great instruments of the recorded medium, from the falsetto of “If It’s Magic” to the gospel climb of “As”. The costs fall across a share: under-edited vamps, crowded mixes, some generic timbres, and two routine tracks on the extra disc.
Score: 9.0 / 10
One law is announced in the first track and claimed throughout: love as the governing principle of a person, a family, a people and the world. Take the most distant elements. “Contusion” is a fusion instrumental of fast guitar and synthesiser unisons; “Village Ghetto Land” a string pastiche over a lament for the poor; “Ngiculela” is sung in Zulu, Spanish and English; “Black Man” is a classroom drill; “Isn’t She Lovely” a father’s song over a bath. They obey the same law more often than not, and the voice and the harmonic language join them, so the range is very wide and the coherence real. Narrowness is not the problem; dispersion is. “Contusion” and “All Day Sucker” obey the sound more than the law, and the law is made in words, not built into every part.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form, and it holds many orders, each by a whole song. Consciousness and love throughout; the family in the newborn of “Isn’t She Lovely”, the childhood of “I Wish” and the mother of “Easy Goin’ Evening (My Mama’s Call)”; the city and its poor in “Village Ghetto Land”; history and the nation in “Black Man”; the sacred in “Have a Talk with God” and “Pastime Paradise”; the music’s own history in “Sir Duke”; the natural order in “Summer Soft” and the impossibilities of “As”; the world beyond English in “Ngiculela”; the cosmos in “Saturn” and “Another Star”. What holds it: labour is absent, the state glimpsed, and the orders arrive song by song, joined by statement more often than by structure.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.4 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 9.0, The Sublime at 8.9 and The Imperishable at 8.8. A harmony, an arranging hand and a voice that carry a double album, height reached often and from several directions with its summit in the vow of “As”, and fifty years of continuous presence for the record and its songs.
Limiting Dimension
The Inevitable at 7.7: seven tracks of six minutes or more, nearly half the whole, with vamps that outlast their turns, a slight song and two routine tracks on the extra disc, so that perhaps a fifth of the record is permitted rather than compelled. Then The Encompassed at 7.9, many orders joined by statement more than structure, and The Archetypal Deep and The Swerve at 8.1: two myths built and the rest evoked, and a turn of scale on a path the singer’s earlier records had already made.
The Necessity Cap clears: The Inevitable at 7.7 against a threshold of 7.5, by two tenths. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.2, The Made at 9.0 and The Inner Law at 8.3, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on three axes: The Imperishable at 8.8 clears the bar of 8.5, and Pressure on Tradition at 8.6 clears it by a tenth, but The Unconcealment at 8.3, The Swerve at 8.1 and The Archetypal Deep at 8.1 fall short of it. The Universal Minimum is met: the lowest axis it governs is The Inevitable at 7.7, against 7.5, and The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.9. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 8.4, in the band of Tier IV, short of the 9.0 the summit requires.
Basis · Songs in the Key of Life, the album as released by Tamla (Motown) in September 1976: a double LP of seventeen tracks in their original order on four sides, about eighty-six minutes, with the bonus seven-inch EP A Something’s Extra, four tracks, about eighteen minutes, issued inside the original package and read as the record’s appendix after side four; about a hundred and five minutes in all. Side one: Love’s in Need of Love Today; Have a Talk with God; Village Ghetto Land; Contusion; Sir Duke. Side two: I Wish; Knocks Me Off My Feet; Pastime Paradise; Summer Soft; Ordinary Pain. Side three: Isn’t She Lovely; Joy Inside My Tears; Black Man. Side four: Ngiculela / Es una historia / I Am Singing; If It’s Magic; As; Another Star. The EP: Saturn; Ebony Eyes; All Day Sucker; Easy Goin’ Evening (My Mama’s Call). Written, arranged and produced by Stevie Wonder and recorded from 1974 to 1976; judged from knowledge of the recording and its reception. No recording, score or lyric sheet was in hand, and running times are approximate. Later compact disc editions, which fold the EP onto the second disc, and the records that sampled the album are evidence, not the object. Songs are cited by title, and no lyric is quoted beyond two fragments of four words. Chart positions, sales and awards are not used. Facts that could not be verified, among them the day of release, the songwriting credits shared on two songs, the studios and engineers, the members of the band and the guests, the identity of the infant and of the choir, and the model of synthesiser used for the strings, are not given.