Marvin Gaye

Perhaps the pervasive element of tragedy that ruled Marvin Gaye’s life accounts for the profound intimacy found in his songs. He scored dozens of hits for Motown in the 1960s both as a solo act (”How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You),” “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”) and singing duets (”Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”). A late-decade period of depression and solitude ended with What’s Going On? (1971). That album eschewed the pop frivolity of Marvin Gaye’s earlier work, grappling with such issues as the Vietnam War, poverty and the ecology. Its success allowed him to create increasingly personal records. Let’s Get It On was perhaps the most explicitly sexual album of its era; the double LP “Here My Dear” recounted the disintegration of his marriage in such detail that his wife considered suing for privacy invasion. Marvin Gaye’s final chart topper was “Sexual Healing” (1983), a luscious ballad that simmered erotically beneath his velvet-lined vocals. His sudden death in 1984 at the hands of his father renewed interest in his life, music and legacy.
(K. Holloway)

Marvin Gaye’s video

He was an American singer-songwriter, musician and performer who gained international fame as an artist on the Motown record label in the 1960s and 1970s.
Beginning his career at Motown in 1961, he quickly became Motown’s top solo male artist and scored numerous hits during the 1960s, among them “Stubborn Kind of Fellow”, “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)”, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”, and several hit duets with Tammi Terrell, including “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “You’re All I Need to Get By”, before moving on to his own form of musical self-expression.

Marvin Gaye’s albums

Marvin Gaye is notable for fighting the hit-making, but creatively restrictive, Motown record-making process, in which performers and songwriters and record producers were generally kept in separate camps. With his successful 1971 album What’s Going On and subsequent releases including Trouble Man and Let’s Get It On, Gaye, who was a part-time songwriter for Motown artists during his early years with the label, proved that he could write and produce his own singles without having to rely on the Motown system. This achievement (along with those of contemporaries, C. Mayfield and G. Clinton), would pave the way for the successes of later self-sufficient singer-songwriter-producers in African American music, such as S. Wonder, L. Vandross, and Babyface.
During the 1970s, he would release several other notable albums, including Let’s Get It On and I Want You, and had hits with singles such as “Let’s Get It On”, “Got to Give It Up”, and “Sexual Healing”. By the time of his death in 1984 at the hands of his clergyman father, Marvin Gaye had become one of the most influential artists of the soul music era.