FEATURE:
Groovelines
Marvin Gaye - Let's Get It On
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FOR this Groovelines…
IN THIS PHOTO: Marvin Gaye at Golden West Studios, Los Angeles, in 1973/PHOTO CREDIT: Jim Britt/Getty Images
I want to highlight one of the most sensuous songs in music history. The great Marvin Gaye released the title track from his Let’s Get It On album on 15th June, 1973. As the song is about to turn fifty, it is worth exploring both the album and that incredible and hugely erotic title cut. A song dedicated to love and sex; a plea for sexual liberation, Gaye wrote and produced the song with Ed Townsend. Released on the legendary Tamla label, it reached number one in the U.S. Such a huge-selling and timeless gem, it is one of Gaye greatest recordings. I am going to come to the song Let’s Get It On in a minute. The album of the same name is a late-career masterpiece. Two years after the seminal What’s Going On was released, a very different-sounding album was released. What’s Going On strikes more because of its politics and messages. The mood and electricity that you get from Let’s Get It On is the biggest takeaway. This feature from last August explored and spotlighted the impact and importance of the 1973 album:
“Gaye fans were primed and ready for this sensuous celebration via the title track lead single, which hit the charts in July that year and was in the second of a six-week run atop the Billboard Hot 100 when the album charted. Easily the longest-running pop No.1 of the year in America, it was the perfect teaser for Marvin’s 13th studio LP.
Music critics purred with satisfaction at the new release. “Gaye uses his voice (in both lead and background) to create a dreamlike quality only slightly less surreal than he did on What’s Going On, his very best record to date,” wrote Jon Landau in Rolling Stone.
“But while on the earlier work he sang of the difference between his vision of God’s will and man’s life,” he continued, “he is currently preoccupied with matters purely secular — love and sex. And yet he continues to transmit that same degree of intensity, sending out near cosmic overtones while eloquently phrasing the sometimes simplistic lyrics.”
Record buyers agreed. Motown promoted the album in new ways and to a younger audience than its traditional base, taking out advertising space for it in National Lampoon magazine and the college edition of Time. The Let’s Get It On LP shipped gold, and debuted at No.28, by far the highest new entry of the week.
In the US, it went platinum within three weeks, and went on to spend a week at No.2, held off the top spot only by The Rolling Stones’ Goats Head Soup. Outdoing the No.6 peak of What’s Going On, it also managed eight weeks more than its predecessor on the Billboard chart, with a 61-week stay”.
The impact of the Let’s Get It On album cannot be understated! It led to barriers coming down. Sex and sexual freedom being explored more fully in music. It was a real watershed moment, - but not just for Soul music. Relatively contemporary albums such as D'Angelo's Voodoo (2000) and Erykah Badu's Mama's Gun (2000) were impacted and influenced by 1973’s Let Get It On. I would urge people to investigate the legacy of Let’s Get It On. One of the most important albums ever. I shall come to that incredible title track soon. First, GRAMMY wrote about Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On. The much-missed legend (Gaye was killed in 1984) was at the peak of his powers in 1973:
“In 1973, the Marvin Gaye album Let's Get It On brought new dimensions to R&B/soul music, expanding the genre's boundaries musically as well as delivering a sexual-liberation message that gelled with the youth "love-in" philosophy in full force at the time.
Many elements came together to build the album's creative success. U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War had ended earlier that year. Gaye's previous socially conscious album What's Going On had been followed by his soundtrack to the movie Trouble Man, and the intimate, slow seductiveness of Let's Get It On was embraced by America as a message that felt just right. As an artist, Gaye's previous sales earned him creative control he took full advantage of, blending previously recorded tracks with new ideas, layering passionate background vocals of his own including moaning vocals, which were daring for the time. This was a turning point for the Berry Gordy music empire as well. He had started the album's Tamla label even before Motown and was expanding to the West Coast.
Let's Get It On features the influential collective of studio musicians known as the Funk Brothers, who helped create a musical platform for Gaye. The album is among their earliest credits, and they went on to win GRAMMY Awards and receive the Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004.
On a more personal side, Gaye's marriage to Gordy's sister Anna was heading toward divorce and some of the romantic impulses captured by the microphone were reportedly directed toward his future wife, Janis Hunter, who producer/co-writer Ed Townsend had brought to the recording studio”.
Let’s get to the song in question. The masterful and hugely charged Let’s Get It On. There was controversy in August 2016, when the family of Ed Townsend sued Ed Sheeran over his song, Thinking Out Loud. They claimed the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic compositions were very similar. It was brought back to court in 2018. This May, the Townsend family claim was rejected in a jury trial. Even though it would be a stretch to say Sheeran plagiarised the song, there are similarities between Let’s Get It On and Thinking Out Loud. Sheeran took inspiration from the 1973 track and created a similar vibe for his 2014 song. The New Yorker recently wrote about the court case and how hard it is to navigate the property lines in Pop. So many other artists have been affected and moved by this enormously powerful and important song. This article from last September goes deep with the phenomenal Let’s Get It On:
“One of the most sensual records in chart history became an American No.1 on September 8, 1973. Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” hit the top to become the second of his three US pop chart-toppers, and got listeners hot under the collar with its subject matter.
On that Billboard Hot 100, “Let’s Get It On” completed its climb to No.1, taking over from Stories’ “Brother Louie.” A week later, Gaye was replaced at the top by Helen Reddy’s “Delta Dawn.” Seven days from then, he had regained the crown for a second week at the summit.
PHOTO CREDIT: Ron Galella/WireImage
The song was written and produced by Gaye with Ed Townsend, who would later contend that his initial idea with the lyric was not about sex, but about overcoming addiction, and getting on with the business of life. But Gaye was pretty clear-cut about the subject matter on the sleeve notes of the Let’s Get It On album, which reached No.2. “I can’t see anything wrong with sex between consenting anybodies,” he wrote.
Keep gettin’ it on
The groove of “Let’s Get It On” was so infectious that, on the album of the same name, it was revisited for “Keep Gettin’ It On.” The sessions, recorded at Motown’s Hitsville West Studios in March 1973, featured such celebrated players as horn men Plas Johnson and Ernie Watts and the Crusaders’ duo of Joe Sample and Wilton Felder, as well as Gaye himself on piano.
Townsend, who had known Gaye through the 1960s, wrote in the liner notes for the 2001 deluxe edition of the album: “I have been blessed to work with many great vocalists in my career, but none quite like Marvin Gaye. The sessions for ‘Let’s Get It On’ were the first time I was overwhelmed by a singer’s ability to understand and interpret the true meaning of a song”.
I am going to finish up referencing a Wikipedia section that collated critical reaction to the sensational Let’s Get It On. The single is fifty 15th June. I still think that its influence is being felt to this day. It was definitely a real and much-needed shockwave in 1973. It was clear that the song resonated with the public given he massive sales and chart success:
“Let's Get It On" became, and remains to this day, one of Gaye's as well Motown Records' most successful singles, as it reached number 1 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart on September 8, 1973. The single remained at number 1 for two weeks, while also remaining at the top of the Billboard Soul Singles chart for eight weeks. In its first week at the top of the chart, "Let's Get It On" replaced "Brother Louie" by Stories, and was replaced by "Delta Dawn" by Helen Reddy; it later replaced "Delta Dawn" and was finally knocked off the top of the chart by Grand Funk Railroad's "We're an American Band". The single stayed inside the Billboard Hot 100 top 10 for 13 weeks, 10 of those weeks inside the top five. Billboard ranked it as the No. 4 song for 1973.
The song became the biggest selling Motown release in the United States at the time, selling over two million copies within the first six weeks of following its release. "Let's Get It On" also became the second best-selling single of 1973, only surpassed in sales by Tony Orlando & Dawn's "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree". At the time, the single was Motown's largest-selling recording ever, selling over four-million copies in 1973 and 1974. The single has gone on to sell over 10 million copies in the United States, and, on June 25, 2007, was certified diamond in sales by the RIAA.
Cash Box said that the song was different from Gaye's previous songs and a "very accomplished effort a la Otis Redding or Al Green." Record World called it a "lovely laid-back number" and said that "this tune gets it on."
A bluegrass version of the song was later recorded by Shannon Lawson on his 2002 album Chase the Sun. "Let's Get It On" was given a remix in 2004, when producers mixed Gaye's vocals with a different musical production labeled as "stepper's music". Released in 2005 as a single, "Let's Get it On (The Producers Mix)" returned the song to the Billboard R&B charts, thirty years after its original release. The re-released version of "Let's Get It On" was certified as a gold single with sales in excess of 500,000 copies in 2005 by the RIAA. In 2004, the song was ranked number 167 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time; in a revised 2012 list, the song was ranked at number 168. In 2008, "Let's Get It On" was ranked #32 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 All-Time Top Songs list”.
It was a no-brainer when it came to the song that I wanted to feature for Groovelines this week! Marvin Gaye’s sensual masterpiece Let’s Get It On is fifty. The iconic Soul king created this masterpiece that changed the face of Soul and popular music. I don’t think that would be too much of an exaggeration! Fifty years from its release, and you can see just how many artists have been influenced by it. Spend some time out to experience Let’s Get It On. Make sure that you play it loud and…
PLAY it long!