This seems to be a good year for defining moments in soul. Everybody knows, or at the very least, knows of, the title track, which has become a kind of audio-visual shorthand joke for two characters getting intimate in film or TV. Thanks to Charlie Puth (with Meghan Trainor), Gaye has even become a verb – Let's Marvin Gaye (And Get It On).
The rest of the album is the same kind of music, not so much “love songs” as “seduction songs”, a soundtrack for lovers everywhere. Side One starts with Let’s Get It On and ends with Keep Gettin’ It On, although some tracks deal with distance in relationships (Please Don’t Stay and Distant Lover).
I was listening with half an analytical ear, and the music is layered with strings and sax, with mostly light bongo percussion, and multi-tracking of Gaye’s voice to produce a combination of elements with a smooth finish. It reminded me of three-phase electricity.
Bear with me.
Single phase AC supply
follows a sine wave, meaning that it passes through zero regularly (typical
domestic supply is around 50Hz, so every second more or less). Multi-phase
supply, however, overlays (typically three) waveforms and a different phase, so
when one wave reaches zero, the other two are still giving a supply; thus the
final waveform is effectively continuous.
That’s what Gaye’s music is like here – although each instrument comes and goes, there’s always something happening musically, and so the end sound is super-smooth. Listening to it is what Augustus Gloop must have felt like as he fell in Willy Wonka’s river of super smooth hot chocolate.
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