10 Most Overrated Rock Albums Of The '70s

There are prolific musicians, and then there’s Stevie Wonder circa 1976. When his opus Songs In The Key Of Life came out, he was 26 years old and already 18 albums deep into a legendary career.

To put things bluntly, that is too much music. Wonder was a virtuoso multi-instrumentalist, able to craft full albums by himself at an incredible pace. But just because you can do that, doesn’t mean you should.

At nearly two hours long, Songs In The Key Of Life is at times an endurance test. For every hard hitting “Sir Duke” or “I Wish”, there’s a “Village Ghetto Land” or “Isn’t She Lovely”, tracks that display the syrupy, sentimental side of Stevie that always threatens to get out.

While it’s impossible to fault the ambition, it’s similarly impossible not to imagine how much better this record would be were it half the length. He’s not really experimenting here, he’s just making tons of music for the sake of it, and compared to his tighter works like Innervisions or Talking Book, it’s sometimes not all that fun to listen to.