#422: Marvin Gaye, ‘Let’s Get It On’
TAMLA/MOTOWN, 1973
This is often referred to as Marvin Gaye’s most sexually explicit record. Others have also said that this is Marvin Gaye’s most spiritual record.
When he first went into the studio, the lyrics of Let’s Get It On were actually more of a religious ode, according to the liner notes of the album. Gaye wrote the first song about the Divine. It was changed to be more sexual for commercial appeal but Gaye did not object because, for him, the topics were just two slices from the same cake.
In David Ritz’s biography of Gaye called, “Divided Soul”, Ritz explained that Gaye’s preacher father was physically abusive. He relied on fear and shame in his teaching and used violence to drive the message home when Gaye did not respond. Gaye’s relationship with his body was typical for anyone growing up in purity culture: abuse was normalised but consensual sexuality was criminalized.
Right before recording this album, Gaye went through huge career shift where he was given more recording freedom. He was also starting to honestly look at his marriage to Berry Gordy’s sister, Anna. He had already been exploring his spirituality specifically via various traditional African practices.
It was during this album that he finally joins his spiritual self with his body in finding a divinity within his sexuality. This is the beginning of the road he will take the rest of his career in finding “sexual healing.”
According to Ritz,
“In his struggle to wed body and soul, in his exploration of sexual passion, he expresses the most human of hungers—the hunger for God. In those songs of loss and lament—the sense of separation is heartbreaking. On one level, the separation is between man and woman. On a deeper level, the separation is between man and God.”
How many times have I listened to this album and completely ignored the yearning of closeness? It is not as crass as the movie scenes or commercials that sample the first few measures of “Let’s Get It On”. They conflate the song into simply baby making music and also negate the impact of vulnerability and truth that Marvin Gaye is speaking into the music.
As I pondered on the spirituality and sexuality of this record, I kept thinking about bell hooks book, “All About Love” where she says, “All awakening to love is spiritual awakening.”
I have been sitting on this newsletter knowing there was something more to this conversation about spirituality and sexuality that was missing. I finally found it last weekend at a concert in a tiny little amphitheater in the mountains.
Halfway through the concert, I felt finger tips tap my left shoulder. At the same time, someone behind me called, “Don’t touch her!” I turned around and found the voice’s owner. She was a petite woman holding hands with a man just a couple inches taller than herself. He pointed towards another man dancing erratically in front of them. He whispered, “That man has been creepy towards you all night.”
Within about 45 seconds, I felt those same fingertips touch my right shoulder and glide down the middle of my back. I turned to him and glared but I immediately thought that he might smack me if I get mad at him. I folded my arms tightly, stiffened my body, and froze. I kept feeling his body brushing up against me. After I finally moved, the man stopped dancing and said, “Oh, shit!” He then watched me for a couple of minutes before disappearing into the crowd.
When I drove home from the concert, I turned this album on hoping for a distraction. I couldn’t stop thinking about that man’s weirdly dainty finger taps. I tried to move my thoughts back to the album and think about spirituality and sexuality and I realized two things:
I was annoyed and mad that this man’s touch ruined *another* night and that I didn’t yell at him. I was embarrassed that I was afraid of him. It was not the first time nor will it be the last.
Sure, the stigma of a woman having sexual desires has been removed in pop culture and certain strains of daily life making it safer for women to be sexual but there is no guaranteed safety for a woman who says ‘no.’
The sexual revolution taught us that we can say ‘yes’ without serious repercussions but the same revolution did nothing to protect us when we say ‘no’. The word, ‘no’ puts us at risk of abandonment and, in many cases, violence. If we are not free to say ‘no’ without fear, then what does our ‘yes’ mean?
I don’t think that we live in a world where women can fully comprehend “Let’s Get It On” as a spiritual album without crumbs of a vulnerability that does not lean into love but instead borrows the raw edges of fear.
I am actually not sure even if Marvin Gaye could fully realize this intersection. He did not exist in a vacuum. Gaye’s sexual experiences rested upon the crumbling pillars of the inherent fears of women, past traumas, and the puritanical hypocrisy of American sexuality.
Horribly and ironically, Marvin Gaye’s story ended with his father shooting him in the head during a drunken argument just 11 years after the release of this album.
His spiritual awakening did not save him from the cruelty by all those he sought to love. But I choose to believe this pursuit brought him peace in living in his body for those last 11 years of his life.
None of our spiritual pursuits will save us from the cruelty of the world either. Until women are able to say no, we cannot safely explore this intersection. But, much like Marvin Gaye, the spiritual journey might help us feel peace and courage in our bodies as we strive towards a society that enables the kinds of relationships that foster the intersection of sexuality and spirituality safely and authentically.
Best songs: The album is short! Listen to it in order. It is good and fun and a lil’ spicy!