Stevie Wonder plays Songs in the Key of Life in full, 50 years on

An album that is still growing

Fifty years after its release, Songs in the Key of Life is getting bigger. Stevie Wonder has released four songs recorded during the sessions for the 1976 double album that had never been heard before, and he is playing the whole record live on an 18-date tour of arenas in Europe and North America that opened in Birmingham on 13 October.

The tour returns to the UK in November for The O2 in London on 3 and 5 November, Co-op Live in Manchester on 8 November and the OVO Hydro in Glasgow on 11 November. It then crosses the Atlantic for Madison Square Garden in New York, the United Center in Chicago, Capital One Arena in Washington, two nights at the Fox Theatre in Detroit, and a final show at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles on 19 December.

The new songs came out on 28 September as an EP that shares the album's name, Ben Beaumont-Thomas reported for The Guardian. "We've lived with Songs in the Key of Life for 50 years, but there's still more to hear," Wonder said in a statement. He said the songs were never added to the album, but were "part of what I was feeling and discovering" while it was being made.

Ben Beaumont-Thomas reported this first for The Guardian. Checked against The Guardian: Stevie Wonder releases four unheard songs from Songs in the Key of Life sessions.

The four songs

The EP has four tracks, all written and produced by Wonder. It's Easier is a bossa nova-style song that asks whether to walk away from love altogether. My Life Story of Love is a song about a relationship coming into bloom, and carries a co-writing credit for Susaye Greene, the former Supremes singer who also wrote Michael Jackson's I Can't Help It with Wonder. I Can See the Sun in Late December is a slow jazz ballad about optimism and finding yourself, and I'm Into Livin' is a funk track in which Wonder gives up his old partying ways for one partner, Beaumont-Thomas wrote.

Two singers who went on to have hits of their own, Thelma Houston and Deniece Williams, can be heard among the backing vocalists on I'm Into Livin', along with Shirley Brewer, who sings on Ordinary Pain on the original album. The tracks were mixed for release by John Fischbach and Gary O Adante, the engineers who recorded and mixed the album in the 1970s.

Fans have long believed there is far more in the vaults. Matthew Wilkening reported for Ultimate Classic Rock that Wonder is rumoured to have worked on as many as 200 other songs while making the album, which has fed hopes of a large box set. No such release has been announced.

The EP is his first release since 2024. His most recent release was the single Can We Fix Our Nation's Broken Heart in 2024, and he has not released a new studio album since A Time to Love in 2005. In 2020 he announced a project called Through the Eyes of Wonder, but nothing more has been said about it since, according to The Guardian.

How the album was made

Songs in the Key of Life was the end of one of the great runs in popular music. In barely two years Wonder had released Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions and Fulfillingness' First Finale, Alexis Petridis wrote in his Guardian review of the Birmingham opening night. The run was so dominant that when Paul Simon won the album of the year Grammy, he thanked Wonder in his speech for not releasing anything that year and giving everyone else a chance.

Those records came out of a fight over control. Wilkening wrote that the run was the result of Wonder's battle for a new contract that gave him complete artistic control over his music. Before Songs in the Key of Life, Wonder had threatened to retire from music altogether, and Petridis wrote that he was so disheartened by America in the mid-1970s that he seriously considered moving to Ghana to work for charity. He changed his mind, and in 1975 signed what was then the biggest recording contract in history, worth about $230m in today's money.

The record that followed was huge in every sense. It ran to 21 tracks across a double album, with a four-song EP, A Something's Extra, bundled with the original release. Petridis counted 108 musicians in the credits, including eight people credited for handclaps, even though Wonder could play almost everything himself.

The songs set out the sound Wonder had built over the decade: sunlit soul and R&B that celebrated love and life while facing up to heartbreak and social struggle, with synthesisers and synth bass set against a huge range of acoustic instruments, Beaumont-Thomas wrote. The album includes Sir Duke, I Wish, As, Isn't She Lovely and Love's in Need of Love Today, and won album of the year at the Grammys.

It has since gone diamond, with more than 10 million copies sold, and was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress, Tom Eames reported for Smooth Radio. Michael Jackson, Elton John and George Michael have all called it the greatest album ever made, Petridis noted.

The show

Wonder told the Birmingham audience that playing the album in full had been a long-held ambition, held back only by the number of people it needs. He has in fact done it before, in North American arenas in 2014 and 2015, and the anniversary shows follow the shape of those concerts, with Superstition added as an encore.

Petridis counted three percussionists, a string section, five brass players, six backing singers, two guitarists and three keyboard players including Wonder, who moves between vintage and modern synthesisers, a grand piano, an upright tack piano and a harpejji, a stringed instrument that did not exist when the album was made.

What made the night, Petridis wrote, was that it was a live performance rather than a perfect copy. Wonder fluffed a harmonica solo, and stopped the band during Isn't She Lovely to start again because he was not happy with it. "Stop!" he cried. "Sue me!" He stretched songs out, let the band dig into the funk of All Day Sucker and Black Man, and added an extra instrumental and the jazz-fusion piece Contusion to the first half.

The album opens quietly, with Love's in Need of Love Today, Have a Talk With God and Village Ghetto Land, which is a risk for an arena show. Petridis wrote that it did not matter, and that lyrics about a country short of empathy and deep in inequality might as well have been written in 2026. He wrote that the deep cuts, such as Saturn, Knocks Me Off My Feet and Joy Inside My Tears, would be anyone else's showstoppers.

Seventy-six and still touring

This is Wonder's second UK tour in two years. In July 2025 he played Co-op Live in Manchester on a greatest hits tour, and Dave Simpson, reviewing it for The Guardian, found the then 75-year-old in "ageless voice and playful mood" across a 26-song set of nearly two and a half hours. Wonder, who has been blind since shortly after birth, swapped sunglasses on stage and joked that he could not see without his glasses. His son Mandla Morris sang I Can Only Be Me, and the night ended with a 10-minute Superstition.

In the run-up to the 2024 US presidential election, Wonder played a 10-date tour called Sing Your Song! As We Fix Our Nation's Broken Heart, built around his single of the same theme, which called for listening and compassion across political lines, Adrian Horton reported for The Guardian. He campaigned alongside Kamala Harris that autumn.

He has also been a constant presence at the big occasions of American music and public life. In March 2025 he played harmonica as Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean sang Killing Me Softly With His Song at the memorial for Roberta Flack. He told the congregation that not seeing with your eyes gives you the chance of "being able to even better see with your heart", Diana Ramirez-Simon reported for The Guardian. In June this year he performed alongside Bruce Springsteen, Bono and the Edge at the opening of the Obama presidential centre in Chicago, Robert Tait reported.

His 1970s albums were the subject of a 2024 podcast series, The Wonder of Stevie, hosted by the New York Times critic Wesley Morris and made by Barack and Michelle Obama's production company, with Questlove and Wonder as executive producers. Miranda Sawyer, reviewing it for The Guardian, noted that it gave an episode to each of the five albums from Music of My Mind to Songs in the Key of Life.

Stevie Chick wrote for The Guardian in 2024 that Wonder showed little interest in competing with his 1970s run in the decade that followed. He put his energy into causes such as the campaign to make Martin Luther King Day a national holiday in the US. Chick wrote that his soundtrack to Spike Lee's Jungle Fever in 1991 was his strongest album since Hotter Than July in 1980.

The full schedule

The tour opened at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham on 13 October. The European leg takes in the Accor Arena in Paris on 15 October, the Royal Arena in Copenhagen on 18 October, the Unity Arena in Oslo on 20 October, the 3Arena in Stockholm on 22 October, the ZAG-Arena in Hannover on 24 October, the Lanxess Arena in Cologne on 26 October, the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam on 28 October and the 3Arena in Dublin on 1 November, according to Ultimate Classic Rock.

The second O2 night on 5 November was added later, Smooth Radio reported, giving Wonder five UK dates in all. The US leg runs from Madison Square Garden on 19 November through Chicago on 21 November, Washington on 23 November and the Fox Theatre in Detroit on 8 and 9 December, to the Intuit Dome on 19 December.

The general sale for most dates was set for 10am local time on 10 September, and for the two Detroit shows on 15 September, Wilkening reported. Detroit is the smallest room on the tour, a theatre rather than an arena, in the city where Wonder began his career at Motown.

Prices we are tracking

We have tracked the four remaining UK dates and the six US dates on StubHub since they were listed. The UK prices have fallen a long way this month. At 8.25am on Friday 30 October the cheapest ticket for the first O2 night on 3 November was £179, against £400 on 20 October, and for the second night on 5 November it was £175, against £402.54 on the same day. Both are listing prices, plus StubHub booking fees at checkout.

Manchester on 8 November was at £148.78, the lowest we have seen for that show in 30 days and down from £287.60 on 20 October. Glasgow on 11 November was at £200, down from £265 on 26 October. All of these are listing prices, plus StubHub booking fees at checkout.

The US shows are a different market. At 4.25am Eastern time the cheapest ticket for Madison Square Garden was $1,280.67 before fees, plus StubHub booking fees at checkout, against $1,347.49 a day earlier. Washington was at $643.22 and the Intuit Dome at $606, while Chicago was at $448.32 and both Detroit nights were close to $467, all before fees, plus StubHub booking fees at checkout.

The cheapest price on resale is a single listing, so it can move quickly as seats are listed and taken down. The live prices for each date print below this story and are checked hourly, and you can set an alert on any of them to get an email when the cheapest price for your date falls.

Tickets today

What StubHub lists now, checked hourly. Prices are listing prices; StubHub adds its booking fees at checkout.