0
0
In March 1975, Stevie Wonder sat down in front of reporters in Los Angeles and told them he was leaving.
Not a break. Not a pause. His Motown contract was due to run out at the end of that year, and he said he wanted to play one last run of shows, give the money to charities in Ghana, and move there to work with children who were blind and disabled.
Plans for the farewell concert had already started.
Songs in the Key of Life did not exist yet. The album turns 50 this month — it was released on 28 September 1976 — and for most of 1975, there was a real chance it was never going to be made at all.
Why Songs in the Key of Life Almost Did Not Happen
Fifty years later it is easy to treat a famous album as something that was always coming. Of course it got made. Of course it is on every list.
But in the spring of 1975 the man who would make it had a different plan, and he said it out loud, on the record, to the press. He had been making hit albums for over a decade. He had already won everything there was to win. And what he wanted to do next was stop, and go, and be useful to somebody in a way that had nothing to do with music.
That is not a story about a burned-out star. It is a story about someone with a good plan. Helping children who cannot see is a good plan. It is arguably a better plan than making another record.
He did not do it.
The Deal That Changed His Mind
On 5 August 1975, instead of walking away, he signed a new contract with Motown.
The terms were reported at the time as the largest recording deal anyone had signed: seven years, seven albums, complete artistic control, ownership of his own publishing, and a sum of money large enough that the number itself made the news. The detail that matters most is not the money, though. It is the artistic control. He was not being paid to keep doing what he had been doing. He was being handed the keys.
Then he disappeared into the studio.
“We’re Almost Finished”
The album was supposed to come out in October 1975. It did not. He kept going back to the mixes, deciding they were not right yet, and doing them again.
The delay ran so long that Motown’s marketing people gave up fighting it and made a joke of it instead. They printed T-shirts that said We’re Almost Finished.
This is the part that usually gets skipped, and it is the most human part of the whole story. The deal was signed. The money was spent. The world was waiting. And he still sat there for another year, unsure whether the thing he had stayed for was actually any good.
When it finally arrived on 28 September 1976, it went straight in at number one on the American album chart — only the third album ever to open at the top, and the first by an American artist to do it. Twenty-one songs. Seven Grammy nominations. Album of the Year, plus three more wins.
Motown careers did not usually end like that. Plenty of them ended quietly, in ordinary jobs, with the hit song still playing on the radio somewhere — as happened to one of the voices on “Dancing in the Street”. Wonder got the rarer ending, and he nearly traded it away on purpose.
The Song at Track Two
Here is the part almost nobody talks about.
The second song on the album is called “Have a Talk With God.” It sits between two much more famous tracks, and it is easy to scroll straight past. It was never released as a single. There was no video, no radio push, no campaign.
Two things about it are worth knowing.
The first: it is one of the few songs on the record that Wonder did not write by himself. He wrote it with his older brother, Calvin Hardaway. On an album built almost entirely by one man in a studio, the song about not having to carry your questions alone is the one he did not write alone.
The second: it picked up one of the album’s seven Grammy nominations, in a category called Best Inspirational Performance. Look at who else was in that category that year and it gets stranger — Willie Nelson’s “Amazing Grace” was there, alongside names like Pat Boone and Charley Pride. It was a country and gospel category, and a funk track from the middle of a double album was sitting in it.
It did not win. Gary S. Paxton took it.
So: not a single, not a winner, not the song anyone names first. And it is still there, fifty years on, doing the same quiet thing it did on day one — telling whoever has the record on that when the people around you have run out of answers, the question can go somewhere higher up.
What Actually Lasted
He was going to go and help children. He stayed and made a record instead, and the record has now spent half a century reaching people he will never meet, in countries he will never visit, including a lot of children.
There is an old idea underneath that, much older than 1976 — that the work a person is actually for is not always the work they would have chosen for themselves, and that you usually only find out which one it was long after the choice is made. He thought the useful thing was in Ghana. It turned out the useful thing was the thing he already had in his hands, and it took him another eighteen months of remixing to believe it was finished.
That is not an argument against going. Sometimes going is right. It is just worth noticing that the plan he almost abandoned is the one still working today.
Fifty Years On
The anniversary lands on 28 September. If you have never sat with the whole thing, it is worth the two hours. And if you only have four minutes, start at track two — the one nobody promoted, the one he wrote with his brother, the one that lost.
Music holds this kind of thing better than almost anything else does. It is why a song can sit in a person’s life for decades and only start making sense halfway through. Another musician’s anniversary this month raised a similar question — what the work was really worth, once the noise around it died down.
If you like pulling threads like this out of the songs you already love, we have a free AI assistant for exactly that — Music & Faith, which opens in ChatGPT and will happily go track by track with you.
And if you are sitting on a plan right now that you are not sure about — the one you keep almost doing — it is worth remembering that a farewell tour was already being booked, and the greatest thing that man ever made was still eighteen months away.
Over to You
Do you think Stevie Wonder made the right call in 1975 — staying to make the album, or would the world have been better served by him going to Ghana? There is no clean answer, which is what makes it interesting. Tell us what you think in the comments.
Share This
- Stevie Wonder announced a farewell tour in 1975. He was going to quit music and move to Ghana to work with disabled children. Then he changed his mind and made Songs in the Key of Life instead. It turns 50 this month. https://bgodinspired.com/index.php/entertainment/songs-in-the-key-of-life-50-stevie-wonder-almost-quit/
- TIL the song “Have a Talk With God” was never a single, lost its only Grammy nomination to a category full of country records, and is one of the few tracks on Songs in the Key of Life that Stevie Wonder didn’t write alone — he wrote it with his brother. https://bgodinspired.com/index.php/entertainment/songs-in-the-key-of-life-50-stevie-wonder-almost-quit/
- Motown got so tired of waiting for Songs in the Key of Life that they printed T-shirts saying “We’re Almost Finished.” Fifty years later it’s still on every greatest-albums list. Worth the wait. https://bgodinspired.com/index.php/entertainment/songs-in-the-key-of-life-50-stevie-wonder-almost-quit/
Questions About Songs in the Key of Life
When was Songs in the Key of Life released?
Songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder was released on 28 September 1976 on Motown, which makes September 2026 its 50th anniversary. The album was originally scheduled for October 1975 but was delayed for roughly a year while Stevie Wonder continued remixing it.
Did Stevie Wonder really plan to quit music and move to Ghana?
Yes. At a press conference in Los Angeles in March 1975, Stevie Wonder said he was considering leaving the music industry and emigrating to Ghana to help children who were blind and disabled, with the proceeds of a final tour going to Ghanaian charities. His Motown contract was expiring that year and a farewell concert was already being planned. He changed course and signed a new Motown contract on 5 August 1975.
Was “Have a Talk With God” ever released as a single?
No. “Have a Talk With God” is the second track on Songs in the Key of Life and was never issued as a single. It did receive one of the album’s seven Grammy nominations, in the Best Inspirational Performance category at the 19th Annual Grammy Awards in 1977, but it did not win — that award went to Gary S. Paxton. The song was co-written by Stevie Wonder and his older brother, Calvin Hardaway.
How successful was Songs in the Key of Life when it came out?
Songs in the Key of Life entered the American album chart at number one in October 1976, making it only the third album in history to debut at the top spot and the first by an American artist to do so. It received seven Grammy nominations and won four awards, including Album of the Year.
Why is Songs in the Key of Life still considered one of the greatest albums?
Songs in the Key of Life is usually singled out for its range — twenty-one songs moving across funk, ballads, jazz and social commentary — and for the fact that Stevie Wonder had complete artistic control over it, having negotiated that control into his 1975 Motown contract. It is also widely regarded as the peak of a remarkable run of albums he released through the 1970s, and it arrived after he had publicly considered leaving music altogether.
