“Isn't She Lovely” by Stevie Wonder

"Isn't She Lovely" opens the third side of Songs in the Key of Life, Stevie Wonder's 1976 album, and it's pure joy: a celebration of the birth of his daughter, Aisha Morris, that begins with a newborn's first cry, taped at a real delivery. Wonder worked on it with Burnetta "Bunny" Jones, a Harlem songwriter and studio owner, and he plays almost everything on it himself, from drums and percussion to Rhodes, bass synthesizer and harmonica; Greg Phillinganes adds some keyboards. Nathan Watts cut a bass part as a guide, but Wonder swapped it for his own keyboard bass.

The last stretch mixes a recording of Wonder bathing Aisha as a toddler with a long, winding chromatic harmonica solo. At over six minutes it was never a single, because Wonder wouldn't chop it down for a seven-inch, but radio played it anyway, enough to send it to 23 on the Adult Contemporary chart in January 1977.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.