Stevie Wonder Celebrates 50th Anniversary of ‘Songs in the Key of Life’ With 4-Song EP Featuring Previously Unreleased Tracks

Stevie Wonder is celebrating the 50th anniversary of his landmark 1976 18th studio album, Songs in the Key of Life, with a world tour on which he will play the entire LP. And now, he’s released a four-track addendum to the double-album which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart and spun off two Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 singles in “I Wish” and “Sir Duke,” as well as winning Album of the Year at the 1977 Grammy Awards.

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On Monday (Sept. 28), Wonder dropped the EP featuring a quartet of classic-sounding previously unreleased tracks from the session personally curated by the singer and newly mixed by the album’s original recording and mixing engineers, John Fischback and Gary O Adante (credited on the original as Gary Olazabal).

“We’ve lived with Songs in the Key of Life for fifty years, but there’s still more to hear,” said Wonder, 76, in a statement. “We didn’t add these songs to the album, but they were part of what I was feeling and discovering as we made it. They bring me back to that time in my life, and now they get to become part of yours.”

The journey begins with the buoyant “It’s Easier,” written, produced and arranged by Wonder, who sings all the vocals and plays Fender Rhodes, drums, percussion and drum machines on the track alongside Michael Sembello (“Maniac”) and longtime bassist Nathan Watts. The uplifting track finds Wonder seeking help from a “love physician” to mend a broken heart, crooning on the chorus, “Tell you, it’s easier to say love bye-bye/Then to go around with a heart that wants to cry.”

That funk-soul tune glides into the bossa nova-like “My Life Story of Love,” which features keyboardist Gregory Phillinganes (Michael Jackson, Toto) on a track in which Wonder pines for a love he just can’t recapture. “It’s my life story of love that never comes true,” he sings over warm keyboards and a breezy drum track. “It’s that fantasy of love that leaves me so blue/ And fills my empty soul/ With love that’s left untold/ But keeps my lover’s heart feeling cold.”

The gentle ballad “I Can See the Sun in Late December” finds Wonder, who has been blind since birth, “seeing” the beauty of the natural world while lamenting those who can’t experience the joy of life. “I bet you can’t even see the sun/ Ah, but the sun is shining right before your eyes,” he sings. “I bet you, you can’t even see yourself/ ‘Cause when you’re lost sometimes yourself is hard to find.”

It winds down with the funky, horn-spiked jam “I’m Into Livin’,” featuring background vocals from Shirley Brewer (who was heard on the original album’s “Ordinary Pain”), as well as Thelma Houston, who would later score a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit with her cover of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ “Don’t Leave Me This Way”, as well as longtime Wonderlove singer Deniece Williams (“Let’s Hear it For The Boy”).

Gliding along on the same soul funk groove as some of the original album’s most beloved tracks, “I’m Into Livin'” is a classic Wonder, with the singer testifying to his endless love over electric piano, buzzed-out bass and saxophones as he promises, “Baby, I’m into livin’ for your stuff/ I’m into livin’ for your sweet love, sweet love/ L-O-V-E, love, your love.”

In addition to the two chart-topping singles, the original album features such classics as the opening track, “Love’s in Need of Love Today,” “Isn’t She Lovely” and “Pastime Paradise,” the latter the source for Coolio’s 1995 hit “Gangsta’s Paradise.”

Wonder’s 18-date Songs in the Key of Life Performances — 50th Anniversary Tour is slated to kick off on Oct. 13 at Utilita Arena in Birmingham, U.K. and touch down in the U.S. on Nov. 19 for a shot at Madison Square Garden in New York.