Scan barcode
A review by chazaiya
Songs in the Key of Life by Zeth Lundy
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
2.75
a book analyzing every song from Stevie Wonder's monolith, Songs in the Key of Life, through the lens of life, death, love, music, art etc.
it provides some interesting insight into context surrounding the album, and at times there's quite good analysis of the music (big fan of the take of Ebony Eyes in particular). however, zeth's writing is so unnecessarily pretentious that it comes off as hard to read both because of its verbose nature and because it's cringe-inducing. i get you're trying to do the album justice but you are not that good of a writer. he added a sentence for seemingly no reason when describing Wonder's creative process ("They leaped from his consciousness in unchained bounds of preordained certainty like Athena from the head of Zeus.") that added nothing seeing as he'd already described exactly this in a succinct manner and without adding confused similes. this happens countless times throughout the book, and makes it much harder than it should be to get through the book. his writing also has quite an uppity, holier-than-thou tone that will occasionally devolve into mindless hating. at some point he makes one particularly egregious comment comparing Celine Dion's on-stage cover of the song I Wish to "nothing more than twenty-first-century minstrelsy minus the blackface", which is an INSANE comment to make with such little tact for someone of Zeth's complexion.
it's at times an interesting read, but an album as excellent as Songs in the Key of Life deserved a much, much, better writer than it received.
it provides some interesting insight into context surrounding the album, and at times there's quite good analysis of the music (big fan of the take of Ebony Eyes in particular). however, zeth's writing is so unnecessarily pretentious that it comes off as hard to read both because of its verbose nature and because it's cringe-inducing. i get you're trying to do the album justice but you are not that good of a writer. he added a sentence for seemingly no reason when describing Wonder's creative process ("They leaped from his consciousness in unchained bounds of preordained certainty like Athena from the head of Zeus.") that added nothing seeing as he'd already described exactly this in a succinct manner and without adding confused similes. this happens countless times throughout the book, and makes it much harder than it should be to get through the book. his writing also has quite an uppity, holier-than-thou tone that will occasionally devolve into mindless hating. at some point he makes one particularly egregious comment comparing Celine Dion's on-stage cover of the song I Wish to "nothing more than twenty-first-century minstrelsy minus the blackface", which is an INSANE comment to make with such little tact for someone of Zeth's complexion.
it's at times an interesting read, but an album as excellent as Songs in the Key of Life deserved a much, much, better writer than it received.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Car accident
Moderate: Death