Songs in the Key of Life at 50, and the four songs Stevie Wonder kept back

On 28 September 1976, Motown put out a record so big it needed an extra disc to hold the overflow. Fifty years to the day, on 28 September 2026, Stevie Wonder opened the vault and added four more songs to the story.

The new release is called Songs in the Key of Life: The EP. It is four previously unreleased recordings from the original sessions, out through Motown Records and Universal Music Enterprises. Wonder picked them himself, and they were mixed by John Fischbach and Gary O Adante, two of the engineers who worked on the original album (Adante was credited as Gary Olazabal back then).

We have not lived with these songs long enough to tell you how they rank against the album, so this is not a review. What we can do is tell you exactly what arrived, and why a 50 year old double LP still gets this kind of attention.

What is on the EP

The four songs, with running times from the label's announcement:

1. "It's Easier" (5:09)
2. "My Life Story of Love" (3:59)
3. "I Can See the Sun in Late December" (4:37)
4. "I'm Into Livin'" (5:45)

All four were written and produced by Wonder. Susaye Greene, who sang with The Supremes, co-wrote the lyrics to "My Life Story of Love." The players are names that will be familiar to anyone who reads album credits from that era: Gregory Phillinganes on keys, Michael Sembello and Ben Bridges on guitar, Jim Horn on saxophone, Raymond Pounds on drums and Nathan Watts on bass. On "I'm Into Livin'" the background vocals come from Shirley Brewer, Thelma Houston and Deniece Williams.

Wonder's own framing, from the announcement, is simple. "We've lived with Songs in the Key of Life for fifty years, but there's still more to hear," he said, adding that the recordings take him back to that period of his life "and now they get to become part of yours."

The label also retold an old studio story. When the final session for the album wrapped at 4:54 in the morning, Watts shouted "Fo'FiftyFo'!" and the phrase stuck as an in-joke between Wonder and his band.

Why the original still matters

It helps to remember how large this record was on arrival. Songs in the Key of Life was a double album that came with a bonus 7 inch EP, A Something's Extra, carrying four more songs: "Saturn," "Ebony Eyes," "All Day Sucker" and "Easy Goin' Evening (My Mama's Call)." It was recorded between 1974 and 1976 across Crystal Sound in Hollywood, the Record Plant in Los Angeles and Sausalito, and The Hit Factory in New York.

It went straight in at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, which almost never happened in 1976. Only two albums had done it before, and this was the first by an American artist. It stayed on top for 13 consecutive weeks. Two singles, "I Wish" and "Sir Duke," went to No. 1 on the Hot 100, while "Isn't She Lovely" became a radio staple without ever being released as a single.

At the 19th Grammy Awards it won Album of the Year, Wonder's third win in that category. It has since been certified Diamond in the US and was added to the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry in 2005.

The hip-hop afterlife

For a lot of younger listeners, including plenty in India, the first time they heard this album was secondhand. Coolio built "Gangsta's Paradise" in 1995 on "Pastime Paradise." Will Smith's 1999 No. 1 "Wild Wild West" leaned on "I Wish." Both came from film soundtracks (Dangerous Minds and Wild Wild West), and both carried Wonder's 1976 writing to a generation that may never have owned the original vinyl.

That is part of why an anniversary like this lands differently from a standard reissue. The album is not a museum piece. It has been living in other people's records for three decades.

Hearing it live, in full

The EP lands two weeks before Wonder starts a 50th anniversary tour on which, per the announcement, he performs the album in its entirety. Promoted by Live Nation, it opens on 13 October 2026 at Utilita Arena Birmingham and runs through Paris, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Hannover, Cologne, Amsterdam, Dublin, London, Manchester and Glasgow. The US leg starts on 19 November at Madison Square Garden in New York, continues through Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Detroit, and closes on 19 December at Intuit Dome in Los Angeles. There are no Asian dates on the schedule, so Indian fans will be watching from a distance for now.

Full tour details are on steviewonder.net, and the label announcement is here.

Where to start

If you have never sat with the full album, this is a good month to fix that. Start at the beginning, give it the full run, then put the EP on after "Easy Goin' Evening (My Mama's Call)" and hear what was left on the cutting room floor half a century ago.

Listen to Songs in the Key of Life: The EP on Apple Music

More from Stevie Wonder on ADMC: /artist/stevie-wonder