Stevie Wonder to Play Songs in the Key of Life in Full on 50th Anniversary Tour
The 18-date tour reaches Madison Square Garden on Nov. 19 and ends at the Intuit Dome on Dec. 19, with two hometown nights at Detroit's Fox Theatre.
Stevie Wonder will perform Songs in the Key of Life from start to finish on an 18-date world tour marking the album's 50th anniversary, including a run of U.S. arena shows and two hometown nights in Detroit, organizers announced Tuesday.
The tour gives American fans six chances to hear one of the most celebrated records in popular music played in full by the man who made it. Wonder, 76, opens in Europe next month and arrives stateside in late November, finishing in Southern California days before Christmas.
The U.S. dates
- Nov. 19: Madison Square Garden, New York
- Nov. 21: United Center, Chicago
- Nov. 23: Capital One Arena, Washington
- Dec. 8 and 9: Fox Theatre, Detroit
- Dec. 19: Intuit Dome, Inglewood, California
The Detroit shows stand out. The Fox Theatre is far smaller than the arenas elsewhere on the itinerary, making the two nights in the city where Wonder grew up and signed with Motown as a child the most intimate of the tour.
Tickets
Tickets for the U.S. shows, except Detroit, go on sale Thursday, Sept. 10, at 10 a.m. local time through Ticketmaster. No public presales were announced for the American dates. The Detroit concerts follow on Sept. 15 at 10 a.m.
The European leg opens Oct. 13 in Birmingham, England, and visits Paris, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Hannover, Cologne and Amsterdam before stops in Dublin, London, Manchester and Glasgow.
A landmark record
Released on Sept. 28, 1976, Songs in the Key of Life arrived as a double LP with a bonus four-song EP, A Something's Extra. Its commercial impact was immediate. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, only the third album ever to do so and the first by an American artist, and held the top spot for 13 consecutive weeks, returning for a 14th in early 1977.
It won four Grammy Awards, including album of the year, and produced two No. 1 singles on the Hot 100, "I Wish" and "Sir Duke," the latter a tribute to Duke Ellington. The record also includes "Isn't She Lovely" and "As."
Wonder spent roughly two years making it, recording at studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles, Sausalito and New York. Guests included Herbie Hancock, George Benson, Minnie Riperton and Deniece Williams.
The Recording Industry Association of America certified the album diamond in 2005, the same year the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry as a recording of cultural, historical or aesthetic significance.
Why it still resonates
The album capped a remarkable streak of records Wonder released in the first half of the 1970s, after he won creative control over his work at Motown. It mixed soul, jazz, funk and pop with songs about love, childhood, faith, poverty and racial injustice, and it has been sampled, covered and cited by musicians across genres ever since.
Performing it in full is a considerable undertaking. The original album runs well over an hour and a half, and its songs range from intimate ballads to densely layered, horn-driven funk.
What happens next
Fans hoping to see one of the U.S. shows will need to move quickly when sales open Thursday, with single dates in New York, Chicago, Washington and the Los Angeles area. The album itself turns 50 on Sept. 28, and no additional American dates have been announced.
Image: Antonio Cruz/ABr via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 br
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