“I felt like a puppet”: the Motown hit Marvin Gaye felt like he didn’t deserve
Hitsville, USA, became the centre-point of mainstream American music during the 1960s. From humble beginnings in Detroit during the late 1950s, Berry Gordy Jr had created a vast musical empire within a few short years. Motown produced an unparalleled wealth of hit singles throughout the decade, churning out chart-topping hits on an astoundingly regular basis. Inevitably, this unwavering dedication to nationwide success had a profound impact on Motown’s artists, with Marvin Gaye feeling particularly isolated by the prioritisation of commercial potential over artistry.
Motown was born from Gordy’s deep appreciation for Detroit soul and R&B but, at his core, he was always a businessman. So, when his label found their first slice of chart success with Barrett Strong’s ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’ in 1959, it set a precedent for the future of the label. During the early 1960s, the label amassed a ridiculously talented roster of artists, including the likes of The Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, and ‘Little’ Stevie Wonder.
At the beginning of 1961, the same year Motown achieved its first number-one single, Marvin Gaye signed a deal with Gordy to join the roster. Although his early singles failed to garner the same commercial success as some of the other artists on Motown at the time, his talent as a vocalist and performer was clear from the beginning, and songs like ‘Can I Get A Witness’ or ‘Take This Heart of Mine’ became iconic of ‘the Motown sound’.
Despite his commendable performances on the label, the throes of musical stardom were difficult for Gaye to reckon with. Struggling with drug addiction and Gordy’s famously hands-on management approach, Gaye might have been a successful R&B star, but he did not feel like it. Even when the singer achieved his first number-one single in 1967, with a version of the Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong composition ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’, he could not fully enjoy the success.
That 1967 single arguably became one of the most influential and recognisable tracks on Motown, immediately eclipsing Gladys Knight’s original recording of the song. Still, Gaye was not wholly convinced by its performance. “My success didn’t seem real. I didn’t deserve it,” the singer later shared, feeling disenfranchised by his lack of artistic freedom on Motown. “I knew I could have done more. I felt like a puppet—Berry’s puppet, Anna’s puppet.”
“I had a mind of my own, and I wasn’t using it,” he continued. “I’d seen how the business was destroying many of my friends and colleagues. I was afraid the same thing would happen to me, so I backed off.” As a result, Gaye failed to follow up on the success of his number-one hit and fell deeper into his mental health and addiction struggles. The situation only grew worse in 1970, when his longtime singing partner Tammi Terrell died at the age of 24 as the result of a brain tumour.
After this challenging period, Gaye completely reinvented himself, his image, and his sound. Much to the anger of Berry Gordy, the performer almost wholly abandoned any aims of commercial success, instead penning the politically-charged masterpiece album What’s Going On.
It was this album that relaunched Gaye’s musical career, in addition to showcasing his unique and visionary skills in songwriting. The album topped the soul albums chart in the US, and Marvin Gaye could rest easy knowing he had definitely earned that success on his own.
