Stevie Wonder Songs in the Key of Life Tour

Spanning over six decades, Stevie Wonder’s music is truly timeless. To celebrate the nearly forty year anniversary of this Grammy winning double album… yes, remember those?!
On the surface, Stevie fans may be disappointed in this concert since he literally played every song from that album so it certainly isn’t a ‘greatest hits’ revue. However, to the true fan, he certainly lived up to the tour name. Besides playing the tunes, he gathered many of the same musicians who played on the album to perform with him including India Arie who was his backup singer at that time. With the long playlist, there was no opening act and there was a twenty minute intermission. During the first set, he played the two biggest hits from that album, «Sir Duke» and «I Wish» which drew the loudest applause.
He opened the second set with «Isn’t She Lovely» which, not so coincidentally, is about his newborn daughter at that time who is now one of his backup singers on stage. About four or five songs into this set, I noticed some younger attendees leaving the concert, likely because they were not familiar with the melodies. Boy, was this a BIG mistake… as the best was yet to come.
After finishing the album, he dove into his encore with snippets of many of his better known hits. Ever the comedian, he took the persona of «DJ Chick Chick Boom» in teasing and goading the crowd to have him play more. Here is how he closed the concert: (
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Can you believe that he is now sixty four years old and still singing and performing like this?! Well, to everyone’s amazement, he performed until around 12:20 am. Perhaps, it was because this approached the close of the tour or, maybe, he was just inspired by the audience.
Besides India Arie, he also invited local stars to join him with Sheila E on percussion and Dave Chappell (hi, Dave!) as comedian. In tune with the current social situation in Jackson, MO, he played Living in the City (
) without inciting any hateful or violent sentiments, more for awareness.
Truly a Wonder-​ful concert! If you get the chance, you must catch him before he stops performing. Clean five stars for #700! Wouldn’t have it any other way.