Songs in the Key of Life: Stevie Wonder's Ghana Plan and a $13 Million Deal

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In early 1975, at 24 and after Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions and Fulfillingness' First Finale, Stevie Wonder was planning a farewell concert and a move to Ghana to work with children with disabilities, driven by frustration with the U.S. government and social inequality. On August 5, 1975, he called off the move. With Arista and Epic circling, he signed a seven-year, seven-album Motown deal with $13 million up front, bonuses, a 20 percent royalty, total artistic control and ownership of his publishing, the largest recording contract to that point.

He then spent a year making the album, first called Let's See Life the Way It Is, mainly at Crystal Sound in Hollywood, plus the Record Plant in Los Angeles and Sausalito and six weeks at New York's Hit Factory, with about 130 people involved. Released in September 1976 as Songs in the Key of Life, a double LP with a bonus four-song EP, it became the first album by an American artist to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and held the top spot for 14 weeks. Wonder missed the 1977 Grammys while in Nigeria, and a failed satellite link left Andy Williams asking, "Stevie, can you see us?"

• Bassist Nathan Watts got home at 3 a.m. and was called straight back to work on the bass line for I Wish.
• Wonder sang upbeat leads into an Electro-Voice RE20, and Motown staff wore shirts reading "We're almost finished."
• Gary Byrd co-wrote Village Ghetto Land and Black Man, and brother Calvin Hardaway co-wrote Have a Talk With God.
• Paul Simon thanked Wonder at the 1976 Grammys for not releasing an album that year.
• Will Smith reworked I Wish and Coolio turned Pastime Paradise into Gangsta's Paradise, and the episode says a 2026 anniversary tour and an EP of four 1976 outtakes followed.