Songs in the Key of Life – Stevie Wonder

**Adam Maness** (0:26)
I'm Adam Maness, and I'm Peter Martin, and we'll listen to the You'll Hear It podcast.

**Peter Martin** (0:29)
Music Explored.

**Adam Maness** (0:30)
Explored brought to you today by Open Studio. Go to openstudiojazz.com for all your jazz lesson needs, Peter.

**Peter Martin** (0:36)
And a little something, a new, sorry. Am I pointing at you too much?
Because I'm excited. We have a special bonus coming from Open Studio that actually draws directly from this album. The first time only lesson.

**Adam Maness** (0:48)
First time only. Don't tell them, though. We'll tell them later. We'll tell them later.

**Peter Martin** (0:51)
Don't forget, though.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:52)
Put a pin in it. How you doing, man?

**Adam Maness** (0:53)
Pretty good, how are you?

**SPEAKER_3** (0:54)
Episode one of season 15

**Adam Maness** (0:57)
15 years, can you believe it?

**Peter Martin** (0:59)
I think I met you 12 years ago.

**Adam Maness** (1:00)
That's what's weird about it.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:01)
That's what's so weird.

**Adam Maness** (1:02)
No, I think this is in the middle of our seventh or eighth year. Yeah, seventh year. But we've done 15 seasons. Scientifically, there's no rhyme or reason to a season.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:10)
Well, you know, the season, the seasons of my life.

**Peter Martin** (1:15)
That's reasons, we need to do that album.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:16)
What is that?

**Adam Maness** (1:16)
How did that fall off the list?

**Peter Martin** (1:18)
Earth, Wind and Fire.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:19)
Oh yeah.

**Peter Martin** (1:19)
Yeah, we gotta do that.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:20)
Talking about making some notes.

**Peter Martin** (1:22)
Yeah, no, this is exciting because we are, we've covered this album sort of, but not in our immutable new You'll Hear It fashion, Songs of the Key of Life, 1976, Steve Lynn Morris, aka BKA, Stevie Wonder, The Great.

**Adam Maness** (1:39)
That's right. And we're gonna do a special version of this episode where we're gonna actually do, borrowed from our friends over at the old Ringer Network.

**Peter Martin** (1:49)
Don't tell anybody.

**Adam Maness** (1:50)
But we're gonna do a little draft of Songs in the Key of Life.

**Peter Martin** (1:54)
And full disclosure, we just planned this 30 seconds ago because we were having trouble, like this is such a monumental record. Look, this, let me just set the stage a little bit. This record, these records, this is a double album, right?

**SPEAKER_3** (2:06)
So it would be Due Albumi, as they would say in, no, they wouldn't say that in Italy.

**Peter Martin** (2:11)
But this is 1976
This was a very important record. This comes either right at the end of Stevie's classic period, Intervision, Fulfilling This First Finale, Music of My Mind, or the beginning of the next period, going into Musicquarium and Hotter Than July and all the great 80s hits. It's right at this kind of fulcrum of Stevie's career, and it's a long, because it's two albums, two record album. It's a beautiful cover design. This introduced me, actually, to Stevie, through my music teacher in elementary school. This is an important record. This is a beautiful record. But we realized we can't just go through every track and be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're going to mix it up a little bit. You'll hear it style.

**Adam Maness** (2:50)
So there's 21 tracks on the album, which means, Peter, we should probably 21 have a place setter and just start with Loves and Need of Love Today, which is the opening track. And then from there on, you and I will alternate drafting our favorite tracks so that we see who gets the better line up by the end.

**Peter Martin** (3:08)
I can already tell you, there's no losers here. There's only winners.

**Adam Maness** (3:11)
I know. Because it is a masterpiece. And this is sort of like an all killer, no filler album. So anything's possible. But let's check out the opening track. This is the neutral.

**Peter Martin** (3:21)
So this is your first choice.

**SPEAKER_6** (3:22)
No, this is the neutral.

**Adam Maness** (3:24)
No, no, no, no.

**Peter Martin** (3:24)
Well, who goes first?

**Adam Maness** (3:26)
Did you not just hear what I said? We need to burn a track because there's 21 tracks. So this play setter loves The Need of Love Today is nobody's track.
This is the listener's track.

**Peter Martin** (3:36)
This is one of the greatest openings. I know we've said this before with Stevie, but.

**Adam Maness** (4:36)
Yeah, and where it ends by the end of the track. Yeah, it is one of the all-time great opening tracks, as you would need to be an all-time great album.

**Peter Martin** (4:44)