The song Marvin Gaye couldn’t sing: “The pain he was going through”
I’m one of many music fans who have read or watched the High Fidelity film and subsequently related to the pathetic reality of its main character, Rob.
Not so much in the neurotic and emotionally compulsive manner (although we all have that beast in us somewhere), but more in the overly obsessive and uncompromisable attitude towards his beloved music. While I don’t own a record shop or worse gamify my relationships with people, I do, however, love Marvin Gaye to an unhealthy degree and will at least raise a glass with him, to that.
But the brief moment of empathy I share with this fictional character is ruined by his fair, albeit completely wrong, musical take. With resolute assurance, the book’s protagonist consistently claims that Let’s Get It On is Gaye’s best ever album, and to disagree with that is nothing more than a display of stupid.
Call me stupid, but isn’t What’s Going On Gaye’s best album? The 1971 classic is a near-perfect piece of work that threads an entire sonic concept between nine different songs that feel completely independent, nonetheless. Moreover, Gaye’s lyrics are simply the best they have ever been as he wrestles with social injustice, and his already proven vocal ability, once again, astonishes as he delivers these messages.
While Let’s Get It On presents a similarly concise album on nine killer songs, each of those feels as though it warrants single status and has somewhat of a life outside the borders of the record. None more so than the title track, which has gone on to become the ultimate bedroom anthem to the point where it is almost damaging to the genuine merit of the song.
Because the genesis of it was more than just Gaye trying to satisfy his sexual desires through music, it was written at an incredibly difficult time in his life, where his career presented somewhat of a crossroads, he was confronting a crumbling marriage, and on top of that, he was wrestling with a crippling drug addiction.
Those actually made Gaye the perfect person to take on the song of writer and producer Ed Townsend, who was trying to convey something more nuanced with the title message. Less about physical desire and more about the desperate need for intimacy and companionship as a means of coping, Gaye delved into the true nooks and crannies of the song’s lyrics.
“I’d just come out of rehab, where I’d beaten a monstrous addiction to alcohol,” said Townsend. “I was looking to move ahead with my life, to ‘get it on’. Marvin grasped this completely. But he didn’t stop learning the lyrics. He bypassed superficiality, questioning where you were coming from when you composed the song.”
Townsend added, “He couldn’t just sing it; he had to connect with it as deeply as he’d written it himself. I witnessed the pain he was going through in his life. I was also blessed to witness the joy of an artist fully engaging with his work.”
I doubt Gaye and Townsend minded the misconception of the song’s lyrics, however. It quickly hit number one on the pop and R&B charts, with the album remaining at the top of the Soul Albums chart for 11 weeks and number two on the Billboard Top LPs chart. But despite all that, it’s not as good as What’s Going On.
