I Wish

The lead single from Songs in the Key of Life, released in November 1976 with You and I on the B-side, looks back at Wonder's childhood in the 1950s and early 1960s and his wish to relive it. He said the music came to him on the Saturday of a Motown picnic in the summer of 1976, when he had a bad toothache but such a good time that he went straight to Crystal Recording Studio afterward. The lyrics came harder. He first tried to work in cosmic and spiritual themes, but the music was too much fun for them, and the chorus about wishing those days would come back was the strongest thing he found. Cash Box said radio stations spent weeks deciding which cut of the album the public wanted most, and I Wish won.

Wonder sang and played Fender Rhodes, ARP 2600 and drums, with Nathan Watts on bass, Hank Redd on alto saxophone, Raymond Maldonado and Steve Madaio on trumpets, and Trevor Lawrence on tenor saxophone. Watts remembered being called back at 3 a.m. For the television series Classic Albums, Wonder recreated a small section of the song with most of the original musicians to show how he composed and arranged it.

It reached number one on the Hot 100 for one week and on the R&B chart for five, and number five in Britain. It won Best Male R&B Vocal at the 19th Grammys. Tony Parsons of NME praised its sly keyboard lines, tight funky rhythm section and Stax-style horns. Watts's eight-note bassline makes it one of Wonder's most sampled songs, and Will Smith's Wild Wild West in 1999 is the best known. Setlist.fm logs it 268 times.