Jerk Music Critic: Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life

It's a rare double album that doesn't overstay its welcome. It's a rarer double album that sets itself high goals for musicship and message, and actually hits them. There's real sophistication here, real harmonies you can feel, thick layered instrumentation you could get lost in. Songs like "Black Man" point out much we've all given to society, "Saturn" (from the original companion EP and now a well-deserved part of current CD issues) gives us the wisdom of learning from our mistakes and "Love's In Need Of Love Today" reminds us that conquering prejudice isn't a single point in time. (And don't we all, atheists and preachers alike, need to "Have A Talk With God"?) Combined with zippy songs like "Sir Duke" and "I Wish" (and the best title on the album, "All Day Sucker"), and sweet ones like "As" and "Isn't She Lovely," it deftly avoids that other curse of double albums, collapsing under the weight of their sheer pretentiousness. A product of its time yet ineffably timeless, this album is Stevie's finest. Current CD releases include everything from the companion EP, which, unlike many such tack-ons, has songs fully coherent with and just as sublime as those on the main album. (Content: mild adult themes in "I Wish.")

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Express Yourself

The Jerk Music Critic is a collection of amateur music reviews I wrote largely non-professionally between the 1990s and today. Some of these reviews are contemporary and some are retrospective, and a few are rather dated, but all are intended to be free-standing and permanent records of my completely worthless musical opinion. They are presented in no particular order and "new" reviews that occur may actually be simply prior ones I've only now transcribed. Older reviews have been edited to hopefully remove inaccuracies later revealed, as well as add brief content advisories (see "Smash the PMRC") and, where reissues exist with different tracks, brief commentaries on these later additions (the actual star review was not altered).

If you're looking for a specific artist, or just interested to see what I really liked (or really didn't), "When I Break Down" indexes reviews by artist and by number of stars awarded (see "Star Chart" for an explanation).

As we move deeper into the Internet music age where the album format might seem hopelessly antiquated, there is still some artistic value in the LP to those artists who still take advantage of it, and some of these recordings can only be properly appreciated in that context. I hope you enjoy these reviews and recommendations, and don't take them too seriously. — Cameron Kaiser

Star Chart

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
An instant classic. Substantially advances/d the state of the art, either technologically, stylistically, or (preferentially) both, and is outstanding music besides. Buy it.

🌟🌟🌟🌟
A excellent album. Nearly every song is a gem; nearly every piece is a winner. Falls short of 5 stars for want of that certain special something, but the difference is in impact, not in musical quality. Buy it.

🌟🌟🌟
Solid. Mostly good songs with a few clinkers. Salvageable with a good playlist. Buy it cheap.

🌟🌟
Mixed. Some good songs stand out, but not enough to make it listenable as a whole. Buy the good songs on iTunes.

🌟
Bad. One or two tracks of even decent quality. Buy the good songs cheap on iTunes.

💩
How did this get released?

Smash the PMRC

I don't advocate for censorship or unnuanced black and white stickers, but I do advocate for parents being able to raise kids in the way they see fit, which might include introducing albums of controversial yet artistic merit at a point in their child's life when they can better appreciate it. The content summaries are intended to be a very general guide, reflective of only my own personal sensibilities and mine alone, and do not substitute in any way for a parent actually sitting down and listening to the album themselves. If you excessively rely on my content advisories, then I'm the one raising your kid, and you really don't want that.