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Like all double albums, Songs in the Key of Life is imperfect but audacious. If its titular concern - life - doesn't exactly allow for rigid focus, it's still a fiercely inspired collection of songs and one of the definitive soul records of the 1970s. Stevie Wonder was unable to control the springs of his creativity during that decade. Upon turning 21 in 1971, he freed himself from the Motown contract he'd been saddled with as a child performer, renegotiated the terms, and unleashed hundreds of songs to tape. Over the next five years, Wonder would amass countless recordings and release his five greatest albums - as prolific a golden period as there has ever been in contemporary music. But Songs in the Key of Life is different from the four albums that preceded it; it's an overstuffed, overjoyed, maddeningly ambitious encapsulation of all the progress Stevie Wonder had made in that short space of time.Zeth Lundy's book, in keeping with the album's themes, is structured as a life cycle. It's divided into the following sections: Birth; Innocence/Adolescence; Experience/Adulthood; Death; Rebirth. Within this framework, Zeth Lundy covers Stevie Wonder's excessive work habits and recording methodology, his reliance on synthesizers, the album's place in the gospel-inspired progression of 1970s R'n'B, and many other subjects.… (more)
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background info on Wonder, Motown, etc.
- verbose
contained a few interesting reflections on the creative life of an artist and music structure
- too much bashing of other music
Even if I didn't agree with a lot of what Lundy puts forth here, it at least got me to clarify my own
I don't know if I got lucky with some of the earlier 33 1/3 books I read, but the last three have been complete stinkers (The Ramones/The Ramones, Guns 'n' Roses/Use Your
The author takes at least two opportunities to take swipes at Emerson, Lake & Palmer's bloated prog rock (I'm not a massive fan of ELP, but one swipe in a book as short as this is enough). But what I found hilarious (probably too hilarious, but I'm desperately trying to find any fun I can) is that the author busts a prog rock band because they take all the humanity out of the electronic instruments they employ, as well as all the fun and improv out of the music. And that's exactly how this author writes. Seriously, the writing is pretentious and bloated, and the author won't state a fact cleanly in a sentence of five words when a bigger sentence with a lot more adjectives, adverbs, and analogies can be substituted in. So, where a different author to deliver the information cleanly and with humanity and with fun, this author instead choose to batter the reader into submission.
For such a short read, this book is a bloated, pretentiously-written excuse for the author to void their diarrhetic lexicon.
For all that, are there some nuggets of information in here? Yes, there are, when you wade through all the sh*t.
But yet again, while I understand it helps to get a sense of where the artist in question was coming from with their previous album and some of the stuff going on in their life, as well as a bit of insight into what happened once the album was released, I simply don't understand why, when the book specifically titled Stevie Wonder - Songs In The Key Of Life has to dive back to when he was twelve years old, and jump forward two decades.
Can't we just get an in depth look into the album and artist the book is titled after? Please?