Stevie Wonder releases four unheard Songs in the Key of Life songs on the album's 50th birthday

Stevie Wonder released four unheard songs from the Songs in the Key of Life sessions on September 28, 2026, fifty years to the day after the album came out. The EP is called "Songs in the Key of Life: The EP" and holds "It's Easier", "My Life Story of Love", "I Can See the Sun In Late December" and "I'm Into Livin'". It went out at 4:54 a.m., a nod to the hour the album's last session ended.

The album that didn't fit

The 1976 release was already too big for its format. Seventeen songs filled a double LP, and four more went on a bonus 7-inch called "A Something's Extra": "Saturn", "Ebony Eyes", "All Day Sucker" and "Easy Goin' Evening (My Mama's Call)". A 24-page lyric and credit booklet came in the sleeve. The new EP is a second overflow, released half a century after the first.

Stevie says the four were never meant for the record. "We didn't add these songs to the album, but they were part of what I was feeling and discovering as we made it," he said in the release announcement. "We've lived with Songs in the Key of Life for fifty years, but there's still more to hear."

Same hands on the mix

The EP was mixed by John Fischbach and Gary O Adante, the two engineers who worked on the original. On the 1976 sleeve Adante is credited under his earlier name, Gary Olazabal. Susaye Greene, formerly of the Supremes, co-wrote the lyrics of "My Life Story of Love". Gregory Phillinganes, Michael Sembello, Ben Bridges and bassist Nathan Watts play on the sessions, with backing vocals from Shirley Brewer, Thelma Houston and Deniece Williams.

Fo'FiftyFo'

The sessions ran for about two and a half years, across Crystal Sound in Hollywood, the Record Plant in Los Angeles and Sausalito, and a stretch at the Hit Factory in New York. When the final session wrapped at 4:54 in the morning, Watts shouted "Fo'FiftyFo'!", and the phrase became the band's joke for the end of a night. The release time quotes him.

The record almost didn't happen. In 1975 Stevie talked openly about leaving music and moving to Ghana. On August 5 that year he signed a seven-year, seven-album contract with Motown worth $37 million, with full artistic control, the biggest deal any recording artist had signed at that point.

The chart run

Only Elton John had debuted at No. 1 before, with two albums in 1975, which made Stevie the first American artist to do it (per Wikipedia). Elton later wrote about the record for Rolling Stone in 2003: "wherever I go in the world, I always take a copy of Songs in the Key of Life. For me, it's the best album ever made."

The tour

A 50th-anniversary tour opens the European leg on October 13 at Birmingham's Utilita Arena and the US leg on November 19 at Madison Square Garden, closing December 19 at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles.