Stevie Wonder Surprise-Releases Four Unheard 'Songs in the Key of Life' Tracks

Stevie Wonder surprise-released Songs in the Key of Life 50: The EP on Monday, containing four previously unreleased studio recordings he made during the sessions for his celebrated 1976 album and held onto for half a century.

The four tracks — "It's Easier," "My Life Story of Love," "I Can See the Sun in Late December," and "I'm Into Livin'" — arrive ahead of a tour commemorating the 50th anniversary of the album, which prompted Wonder to finally issue them.

"We've lived with Songs in the Key of Life for 50 years, but there's still more to hear," Wonder said. "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."

John Fischbach and Gary O. Adante (credited as Gary Olazabal), the recording engineers who mixed the original album, mixed the new EP. The original release itself included a four-song bonus EP, A Something's Extra, a precedent the new collection extends.

The EP is timed to the 50th anniversary of the diamond-certified double album, which came out on Sept. 28, 1976. It appeared on streaming services at 4:54 a.m. PDT — the time the original sessions wrapped, when bassist Nathan Watts remarked "Fo'FiftyFo'," an in-joke Wonder and his musicians have used to mark the end of sessions ever since.

Songs in the Key of Life placed at Number Four on Rolling Stone's ranking of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. "[The album] encompasses an incredible range of life experiences — from the giddy joy of a baby in the bathtub ('Isn't She Lovely,' featuring the cries and giggles of Wonder's infant daughter Aisha Morris) through tributes to his musical heroes ('Sir Duke') to dismay about the indifference of the wealthy ('Village Ghetto Land')," the magazine wrote. "Wonder pulled from every imaginable musical source — the ecstatic 'Sir Duke' references Duke Elington and Ella Fitzgerald, while 'As' featured Herbie Hancock on Fender Rhodes."

The four new songs expound on the album's themes of acknowledging all that life and love have to offer. "It's Easier," the opener, is an upbeat breakup song carrying the message, "It's easier to say, 'Love, bye-bye'/Than to go around with a heart that wants to cry." The similarly heartbroken "It's My Life Story of Love" finds Wonder singing, "It's my life story of love that never comes true," though he sounds more hopeful than plaintive as he proclaims he'll win his love back in lyrics he co-wrote with the Supremes' Susaye Greene. "I Can See the Sun in Late December" is a slow-shuffling ballad about nostalgia for warmer times. "I'm Into Livin'" closes the EP as an easy, jazzy funk ballad on which Wonder sings, "I'm into livin' for your sweet, sweet love, L-O-V-E, love," his voice rising and falling with the music.

As on the original album, Wonder plays most of the instruments himself: drums, GX-1-Dream Machine, Bass-GX-1-Dream Machine, Fender Rhodes, and electric bass, variously, in addition to singing. Gregory Phillinganes played the Rhodes on "My Life Story of Love," and Watts played bass on "It's Easier" and "I Can See the Sun in Late December." "I'm Into Livin'" features backup vocals by Shirley Brewer, who sang on the album's "Ordinary Love"; Thelma Houston, who later recorded the hit "Don't Leave Me This Way"; and longtime Wonder backup singer Deneice Williams.

Wonder will perform all 17 songs from the original double album on a world tour this fall, kicking off in Birmingham, England on Oct. 13 and wrapping in Los Angeles on Dec. 19.