The creation of a good double album is often an onerous affair. The album has to be thematically continuous enough that you can view it as a single fluid statement. Each disc has to be distinct enough that you can listen to them as separate documents. The second disc has to feel somewhat like a sequel to the first without suffering the handicap that frequently befalls sequels. With all this in mind, Songs In The Key Of Life should seem all the more impressive.
I would describe the White Album as a perfect double album. Controversially enough, I would describe Reflektor by Arcade Fire as a perfect double album. Songs In The Key Of Life comes really really really really painfully close to perfection, but I do think that the first disc is slightly superior to the second. This is not even an insult to the second disc; it is just that the first is so damn good. Let's peruse through disc one's track listing: "Love's In Need Of Love Today," "Have A Talk With God," "Village Ghetto Land," "Confusion," "Sir Duke," "I Wish," "Knocks Me Off My Feet," "Pastime Paradise," "Summer Soft," and "Ordinary Pain." I will unequivocally assert that Songs In The Key Of Life disc one is the best disc Stevie Wonder ever put out. Better, even, than Innervisions. And the second disc really is SO good, but it does make the album feel a little superfluously long.
Before I go on, I think this is a great time to point out how much of an album purist--let's be real, snob--I am. Songs In The Key Of Life was originally released with 17 tracks. The special edition came with a four-track EP called A Something's Extra, but the CD version has those four tracks appended to the album itself. So, when I discovered this, I went onto my laptop and separated those four tracks from the album, labeled them A Something's Extra EP, and put a picture of the vinyl EP that was released in the special edition as the album cover. ALL TO PRESERVE THE SANCTITY OF THE ALBUM-FORM. In some ways, I am proud of myself. In others, horribly disgusted.
And now I feel bad. I don't want you guys to think that I don't like this album that much because of disc two. First of all, notice this is not a flashback feature. This is a current obsession of mine. I made a comment to my dad about how I thought Frank Ocean sounded vocally similar to Stevie Wonder and I realized that I had never listened to Songs In The Key Of Life front-to-back. Which is a heinous infraction because this album will probably find its way into my top 50. Disc one is distilled happiness and disc two feels like a still meaty bone to chew on that I know I will continue to draw significant doses of pleasure from long after the more poppy luster of disc one has become tarnished. With songs like "Isn't She Lovely," "Black Man," "As", and "Another Star," I know I will probably come back to this album just to hear disc two. The songs are longer and more tough like "Living For The City" from Innervisions. They are more jazzy. They have all the signs of longevity. So, in some ways, maybe Stevie Wonder did pull off a perfect double album. He showed us that there is a way to make an album where one disc is an "instant slam dunk," as my father so eloquently put it, and the other is more of a grower, all without making a dramatic stylistic saltation.
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