‘Sexual Healing’: How Marvin Gaye accidentally fell into the trap of selling sex
When the name of Marvin Gaye is brought up in casual conversation, most will immediately dart to the fact that he made a number of songs during his career that were prime fodder for being played in the bedroom as the soundtrack for a romantic encounter.
You can’t argue with it, seeing as ‘Let’s Get It On’ and ‘Sexual Healing’, among others, are both classic tracks that ooze a certain horniness. Unfortunately for Gaye himself, it was also impossible for him to escape this sexually charged image that people had of him in their heads, and regardless of how he wanted to be perceived, his audience had already made up their minds that he had become the king of sensual soul music.
Now, he certainly leaned into this, but for people to dismiss him as an auditory wingman as opposed to an artist who had something significant to say is, frankly, a horrendous misinterpretation of what Gaye stood for creatively. His early work for Motown was brimming with a sweetness, and his soaring vocals that often found themselves engaging in a call-and-response with frequent duet partner Tammi Terrell were a delight to behold.
However, entering the 1970s, it was clear that Gaye found himself with considerably more to say and greater ambitions to pursue. You only have to look at how important a record like What’s Going On is in its address of the Vietnam War, not to mention its lusciously orchestrated structure as a song cycle, to recognise that his artistic scope stretches far beyond mindless shagging, and that he was capable of producing some of the greatest works of art of the period.
Delve further into his output from the decade, and you’ll hear him pivot further away from smooth soul into funk territory, showing off an even more expansive array of influences that he was able to lean into and excel at. However, the release of ‘Sexual Healing’ and the subsequent 1983 tour in support of Midnight Love seemed like a regression, and something that Gaye himself didn’t seem to have his heart in.
“I’m not crazy about my sexual image,” Gaye confessed in an interview while touring in support of the album. “I can’t deal with that psychologically, and besides, I never put that particular handle on myself anyway. However I came by it, I came by it legitimately. It’s no fault of mine. Sex sells, and I came out of a situation with Motown where we resigned with CBS, and they were interested in a commercial product.”
He reiterated his point, as if resigned to the fact that he had been pigeonholed as a sex symbol, and that in order to help his career continue, he had to accept it. “As far as ‘Sexual Healing’ is concerned, I’m not overly thrilled with the content,” Gaye added. “I don’t like to advocate sex really, but it sells, so there you are.”
Gaye was simply doing it for the money rather than the love of it, and his assassination soon after in 1984 meant that he was unable to ever prove himself as an artist again, leaving his legacy to attract more attention for the sexually-charged later works to sit further forward in the mind of his listeners. To add insult to injury, his first posthumous album, Dream of a Lifetime, leans even further into the sexual side of his persona.
It was clear that the industry wanted him to be something that he wasn’t, and it’s unfortunate that the recognition he gets for his more socially-conscious work sometimes pales in comparison to the sensuality of hits like ‘Sexual Healing’.
