Songs in the Key of Life

By March 1975 Wonder was considering quitting music and moving to Ghana, and a farewell concert was being planned when he signed a new Motown contract on 5 August 1975. It covered seven albums over seven years and gave him full artistic control. The working title was Let's See Life the Way It Is. The release was due around October 1975 but was delayed for remixing, and Motown printed T-shirts reading We're almost finished. The final mix was done at Crystal Sound, where most of the recording took place, with sessions also at Record Plant studios in Hollywood and Sausalito.

About 130 people worked on the album. George Benson played guitar on Another Star, Herbie Hancock played Fender Rhodes on As, and Minnie Riperton and Deniece Williams sang backing vocals on Ordinary Pain. Wonder wrote Village Ghetto Land and Black Man with Gary Byrd, Have a Talk with God with his brother Calvin Hardaway, and Saturn with Michael Sembello. Greg Phillinganes, 18 years old, joined the sessions in his first professional job. Nathan Watts remembered being called back at 3 a.m. for I Wish, and about six weeks at The Hit Factory yielded one kept basic track. It came as a double LP with the four-song bonus EP A Something's Extra and a 24-page booklet of lyrics and credits. Motown flew the press and everyone who had worked on it to Long View Farm studio in Massachusetts for a preview.

It entered the Billboard 200 at number one on 8 October 1976, only the third album to do so and the first by an American artist, and spent 13 consecutive weeks there before returning for a fourteenth on 29 January 1977. It stayed 80 weeks on the chart and was number two on the 1977 year-end chart behind Rumours. I Wish was number one on the Hot 100 for one week and Sir Duke for three weeks. At the 19th Grammys it won four of its seven nominations, including Album of the Year, Producer of the Year and, for I Wish, Best Male R&B Vocal. Wonder was in Nigeria at the time and accepted by satellite phone. The album joined the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002 and the National Recording Registry in 2005, and the RIAA certified it Diamond.

Wonder told Q in 1995 that of all his albums it was the one he was most happy about. Elton John said he always carries a copy, Michael Jackson called it his favorite Wonder album, and George Michael covered Pastime Paradise and Knocks Me Off My Feet on his 1991 tour. Rolling Stone placed it fourth on its 2020 list of the greatest albums. Vince Aletti wrote in Rolling Stone that it had no focus or coherence, though he was mostly favorable. On 28 September 2026 Wonder released a four-song EP of outtakes from the sessions.