Stevie Wonder Unearths Four Unheard Songs From Key of Life Era
Stevie Wonder has released four previously unheard songs from the Songs in the Key of Life sessions as a new EP.
The collection arrived on 28 September 2026 and lines up with the 50th anniversary of Songs in the Key of Life, according to The Guardian. It was reported by uDiscover Music as a four-song EP issued on that date.
The four tracks are It's Easier, My Life Story of Love, I Can See the Sun in Late December and I'm Into Livin'. All four were written and produced by Wonder. My Life Story of Love was co-written with former Supremes member Susaye Greene. Greene previously co-wrote Michael Jackson's I Can't Help It with Wonder.
The material dates from the mid-1970s sessions but was not finished to the same degree. The four tracks were in various stages of completion, according to the Detroit Free Press. John Fischbach and Gary O Adante mixed the four tracks for release. The EP credits Thelma Houston and Deniece Williams with backing vocals on I'm Into Livin'. Shirley Brewer also provides backing vocals on I'm Into Livin' and appears on Ordinary Pain, a song from the original 1976 double LP, a two-record album.
Songs in the Key of Life was originally released in 1976. It won album of the year at the Grammys. Its track list includes Sir Duke, As and Isn't She Lovely. The album closed a run of 1970s Motown LPs built around the TONTO synthesizer system, a room-sized early electronic instrument, plus ARP and Moog synthesizer bass lines, chromatic harmonica solos, and layered clavinet and Rhodes electric piano parts. Wonder largely played and arranged those parts himself, stacking sounds track by track like layers in a painting.
Wonder will play Songs in the Key of Life in full on an arena tour beginning 13 October in Birmingham, UK. The 50th anniversary tour is set for 18 dates, according to Billboard.
This is Wonder's first group of archival studio recordings in some time. His most recent new material before the EP was the single Can We Fix Our Nation's Broken Heart, released in 2024. He has not released a new studio album since 2005's A Time to Love.
The broader context here is how anniversary releases work for older catalogues. EPs built from session outtakes, or leftover recordings, can refresh streaming and licensing around a heritage title without requiring a new studio album. They give a touring production extra press attention and set-list flexibility. They also test demand for a larger reissue program, whether a boxed set, an Atmos remix, or session documentation. For an artist whose last studio LP dates to 2005, unreleased masters from the same period carry particular weight. They are not demos in the usual sense. They are alternate outcomes from a period of high productivity, mixed now to sit alongside the canon.
In my view, the credits deserve close reading. Fischbach engineered much of Wonder's 1970s output. Adante has handled more recent mix and mastering duties. Houston, Williams and Brewer place I'm Into Livin' and Ordinary Pain within the Los Angeles session vocal network Wonder used alongside his core Wonderlove backing group. Greene's co-write further links the Key of Life sessions to the post-Motown writer circuit that later fed Off the Wall. Specialists will parse those lineages. General listeners will hear four finished records.
