20 years ago, Songs in the Key of Life sparked for me a lifelong journey and fascination with music. To this day, every musical discovery or decision I’ve made can be traced back to my love of this masterpiece. And every piece I do love has this album and its master composer/arranger/producer/vocalist/multi-instrumentalist to thank. This album changed my life hearing it with my dad in the car for the first handful of times when I was 10 years old. Even if I didn’t have the words or terminology to fully describe my fascination with it at the time, this album’s detailed arrangements and dexterous genre-bending floored me. To this day as a musician of over 15 years it baffles me for even more reasons than I can count. Each listen brings with it something new, pure, and beautiful. Seeing and hearing Stevie himself perform this album in its entirety with my dad (Detroit, 2014) is a night I look back on as legitimately spiritual. I loved music all my life and grew up in a house where everybody else did too. But never before had an artist and their music captured my attention for something beyond a catchy chorus or a radio-ready beat. With Key of Life, Stevie gave me a nearly 2 hour masterclass of nearly every established genre at the time. It was like observing paintings in a museum from different corners of the planet all meshing seamlessly to form a gallery or exhibit with a message that goes far beyond anymore words I could possibly blather out. Songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder is my favorite album of all time. Loquacious, eloquent, sprawling, heart-filling, life-affirming excellence. Every last second of it. “So *this* is music?”, my 10-year-old-self questioned internally. “Yes this is”, my 30-year-old-self assured him. 10+/10