Stevie Wonder Unveils Four Unreleased Tracks from ‘Songs in the Key of Life’ Sessions

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Stevie Wonder Surprise-Releases Four Previously Unheard ‘Songs in the Key of Life’

Artist, who'll be playing iconic album on tour this fall, recorded the EP's songs in the original 1976 album sessions

By Kory Grow

Kory Grow

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September 28, 2026

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Stevie Wonder surprise-released Songs in the Key of Life 50: The EP , which contains four previously unreleased studio recordings, on Monday. He recorded “It’s Easier,” “My Life Story of Love,” “I Can See the Sun in Late December,” and “I’m Into Livin'” during the sessions for his celebrated 1976 album but held onto them for the past half century. Now that he’s planning a tour commemorating the 50th anniversary of that album , he decided to finally issue them.

“We’ve lived with Songs in the Key of Life for 50 years, but there’s still more to hear,” Wonder said. “We didn’t add these songs to the album, but they were part of what I was feeling and discovering as we made it. They bring me back to that time in my life, and now they get to become part of yours.”

The recording engineers who mixed the original album, John Fischbach and Gary O. Adante (credited as Gary Olazabal) mixed songs for the new EP. The songs further extend the legacy of the original album, which included another four-song EP, A Something’s Extra .

The tracks were timed to the 50th anniversary of the release of the diamond-certified album, which came out on Sept. 28, 1976. The EP arrived on streaming services at 4:54 a.m. PDT, the time the original Songs in the Key of Life sessions wrapped, at which time bassist Nathan Watts remarked, “Fo’FiftyFo’,” which became an in-joke Wonder and his musicians have used to mark the end of sessions ever since.

When Rolling Stone ranked the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, Songs in the Key of Life placed at Number Four . “[The album] encompasses an incredible range of life experiences — from the giddy joy of a baby in the bathtub (‘Isn’t She Lovely,’ featuring the cries and giggles of Wonder’s infant daughter Aisha Morris) through tributes to his musical heroes (‘Sir Duke’) to dismay about the indifference of the wealthy (‘Village Ghetto Land’),” the magazine said. “Wonder pulled from every imaginable musical source — the ecstatic ‘Sir Duke’ references Duke Elington and Ella Fitzgerald, while ‘As’ featured Herbie Hancock on Fender Rhodes.”

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The four songs on the EP expound on the double album’s themes of acknowledging all life and love have to offer. It opens with “It’s Easier,” an upbeat breakup song with the message, “It’s easier to say, ‘Love, bye-bye’/Than to go around with a heart that wants to cry.” The similarly heartbroken “It’s My Life Story of Love” finds Wonder singing, “It’s my life story of love that never comes true,” though he sounds more hopeful than plaintive as he proclaims he’ll win his love back in lyrics he co-wrote with the Supremes’ Susaye Greene. “I Can See the Sun in Late December” is a slow-shuffling ballad about nostalgia for warmer times. And “I’m into Livin'” is an easy, jazzy funk ballad on which Wonder sings, “I’m into livin’ for your sweet, sweet love, L-O-V-E, love,” his voice rising and falling with the music.

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_Originally reported by [Rolling Stone](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/stevie-wonder-songs-in-the-key-of-life-ep-unreleased-songs-1235632871/)._