Marvin Gaye - Let's Get It on
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Artist: Marvin GayeBrand: GAYE,MARVIN
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Extra tracks, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2003-01-14
Music Label: Motown
Product features:
- GAYE MARVIN LET S GET IT ON
- Let's Get It On
- Please Stay (Once You Go Away)
- It I Should Die Tonight
- Keep Getting' It On
- Come Get To This
- Distant Lover
- You Sure Love To Ball
- Just To Keep You Satisfied
- Let's Get It On (The Single Version) (Bonus Track)
- You Sure Love To Ball (The Single Version) (Bonus Track)
Music reviews of Let's Get It on
Music Review: The Original Soul Provider
Rating: 5 Stars
This is as funky an album that you can have in your home. No one knows just HOW funky the album was, however. Mainly, listen to the opening bars of "Let's Get It On" and see what I mean by that mellow but modern funk. Marvin's vocals had a mixture of blues, soul, jazz and gospel, the music was also a mixture of the four genres and the way the backgrounds forged with the strings near the end with that flute? Ah man... if that ain't funky as it is sexy, I don't know what is.
Marvin Gaye was made to sing. You have singers and then you have SANGERS. Marvin is a SANGER. He made you feel what he was saying, especially in this 8-track tour-de-force. Even before putting the album on, you can tell the album was revolutionary from the cover. It was a different Marvin on the cover compared to the one from "What's Going On", the total opposite of "Let's Get It On".
In the former, Marvin had a solemn, distraught and sadden look to his face where it looks like he's getting ready to cry because he's sick and tired of the mess surrounding him and the world, I reckon. But in the cover to "Let's Get It On", it's a different kind of anguish. It seemed like from that cover, you knew Marvin, now draped in a red skullcaps (or kufis) and casual attire, was going through demons of the soul, the heart, the mind and the body.
Lots of people still probably think the title song was just about love and sex and heralded back to Marvin's pre-What's Going On days but listen closely. This ain't the same guy who told his girl she was his pride & joy, nor was it the one who hitch-hiked to every state to find his girl, nor was it the one who sung all them love ballads with female singers. No, this Marvin was completely different. He took what he absorbed from the political, social and religious content of "What's Going On" and made a varied and edgier personal album for "Let's Get It On". The title song was about fighting demons of the heart, body and soul. In one instance, he wants to "get it on" with his woman, in another, though, he brings in a gospel-like sensory when he asks his woman "have you been sanctified?" I mean, this guy was both sexual and religious at the same time. A simple love song built among a funk rhythm turned into a gospel sermon. You would've thought he was saying "GOD, HELP ME!" instead of "I'M BEGGING YOU TO GET IT ON!" You know?
In a 3-song suite that follows after LGIO ("Please Stay", "If I Should Die Tonight" and "Keep Gettin' It On") which he co-composed with doo-wop pioneer Ed Townsend, Marvin fights more demons. In "Please", he fights against loneliness and sadness in a few quick minutes, "If I Should Die Tonight" sounds like a man fighting for sanity while telling his woman "get prepared for whatever outcome comes along if someone takes me away". It's almost like a sad love song to fight suicide almost solemnly. "Keep Gettin' It On", however, sounds different to me. Whereas you may think it was "Let's Get It On, Part 2", it was actually the basis of the original version of the song, which was originally penned by only Townsend. The man had written a religious song to celebrate his sobriety but Marvin changed all of that. In this one, it's like Marvin was pleading to the world to love and not hate: "won't you rather make love, children, as opposed to war like you know you should?" When he asks his audience "have you ever loved somebody?", he could've been talking about different types of people. In other words, the song is not only about love but peace also. So for those who said Marvin drift away from political or social topics after "What's Going On", I think "Keep Gettin' It On" is a political and social statement.
In the second suite with songs from 5 to 8 are very different. More relaxed and more classy in terms of Marvin's own doo-wop roots, "Come Get to This" starts off the suite as one of the happiest sounding songs on the album, as if to keep the optimism going from "Keep Gettin' It On" when Marvin sings happily about a woman coming back to his life after a split.
"Distant Lover" is probably the morning after when the lover goes away "down a lonesome road" with the singer wondering if the person was ever going to come back and doesn't. But I always felt that song had double meaning for Marvin. It's almost like this girl was so special for him he's not able to let go and wonders if it was just a mirage though he reminds himself of her loving grace: "Didn't you know that at every moment I spent with you, I treasure it like it was a precious jewel", Marvin sings so sweetly before literally bleeding and crying on the track at the end.
"You Sure Love to Ball" is the only explicit song on this album because it definitely meant what it entailed: sex. No ifs, ands or butts about it. One of the first songs after Sylvia's legendary "Pillow Talk" single to include moans and groans on a song. But it has to be the last track that really when you get down to it is a really depressing if not deeply wrenching and emotional track.
"Just to Keep You Satisfied" was autobiographing the decay of Marvin's first marriage to Anna Gordy. It was so explicit in biographic detail that you're almost in Marvin's world of heartache. It's built around a sad and dark gothic-esque string quartet that solemnly carries on like somebody just died. The doo-wop backgrounds are classic and Marvin is in a depressed mood wondering if he and his soon-to-be-ex will ever find happiness apart as he solemnly put it at the end of the song. You could actually feel Marvin's tears on your ear phones as he sings "it's too late for you and me, too late for you and I, much too late for you to cry" over and over again.
It seems Marvin was fighting more than just demons of the aforementioned but also demons of love lost. The album was meant to be simply an album of love and sex but when you really listen to it, it's not that at all, it's trying to calm the anger in the spirit and the soul of the man who felt he was slowly losing his ground in life as he went from one new life and saying goodbye to a past life. All in all, it's exactly what "What's Going On" was but more personal to the sadness and anger and tension that was building inside Marvin.
To close, "Let's Get It On" is exactly what many have called it: a masterpiece. Listen to the album for real to know what I'm truly talking about here, these are not words just coming from a fan of Marvin's, I experienced some of that guilt and pain but Marvin took it to a whole new level. Now that's funky.
Description of Let's Get It on
Let's Get It On by Marvin GayeThis product is manufactured on demand using CD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.
Marvin Gaye's 1973 album, Let's Get It On, is a marvel of sexual blandishment every bit the artistic equal of, say, John Donne's best seduction poems. The difference, though, is that the poetry here isn't in the verse--which gets a trifle clichéd--but in the supple pulse of the grooves and in the aching need of Gaye's sensual voice. The marvelous title track, a No. 1 hit, riffs on the earlier hook of Gaye's "What's Going On" to reach a more primal climax, and everything else here--a steamy swirl of sax, strings, and backing voices--is sexy, beautiful, and simply sublime. --David Cantwell
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