Marvin Gaye Gets To A Romantic Soul Landmark
Critics and fans acclaimed ‘Let’s Get It On’ as his best album yet, and it promptly went platinum within three weeks.

Published on August 28, 2018 By Paul Sexton

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/marvin-gayes-gets-to-romantic-soul-landmark/

Marvin Gaye started releasing albums at the age of just 22, in 1961. They started to cross over to a pop audience three years later, when his Together set with Mary Wells appeared. In 1971, the more mature Marvin really connected with the mainstream album audience on the classic What’s Going On. But he scaled even greater heights with the 1973 LP that was released on 28 August 1973 and started its chart journey on 15 September, Let’s Get It On.

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,” Landau 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.”