‘Marvin Gaye: Here, My Dear Album Review’

Looking back at my teenage years, one of the albums that undoubtably shaped me more than any other is the R&B classic ‘Here, My Dear’.

It’s interesting, because I’m not sure if I ever really listened to any Marvin Gaye records. If I have, I can’t recall them. The reason that this album resonated with me was not because of the artist, but because of the story; and this is actually a theme: All of the albums that resonated with me as a younger person were concept albums which imbued the songs with deep meaning.

The Who’s ‘Tommy’. The Mars Volta’s ‘Deloused In the Comatorium’. Sufjan Stevens’ ‘Greetings from Michigan’ (and later, ‘Age of Adz’). Radiohead’s ‘Hail to the Thief’. Price’s ‘Lovesexy’! The list goes on and on.

Listening to these albums, I recognized that it was story that mattered to me more than anything else — and while many of the albums I just mentioned had concepts derived from fiction, the contents of ‘Here, My Dear’ are decidedly real.

So, with an album having such a rich history and personal meaning, I was thankful to see a new ‘review’ from Pitchfork of an album that’s so dear to me.

The writer gives a bit of history to start things out:

Gaye married Anna Ruby Gordy in 1963. He was 24; she was 41. He was an aspiring singer; she was the sister of Berry Gordy, founder of Motown Records. Looking back on the relationship years later, Gaye described it to biographer David Ritz as a mercenary move. “Marrying a queen might not make me king, but at least I’d have a shot at being prince,” he said. “I wanted her to help me cut into that long line in front of the recording studio.”

For a few years, though, Gaye was able to approximate the fairytale love he had always dreamed about. The couple adopted a baby boy. And Gaye’s bounding heart can be heard in his hits of the era like “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You),” where he beams, “You were better to me than I’ve been to myself/For me there’s you and there’s nobody else.” But soon enough, infidelities arose. Fights erupted. Raised in a strict religious household, Gaye had trouble reconciling ideas of love and sex, and though this struggle would lead to some of his most fascinating songs, it also doomed him as a husband.

It’s interesting to think about a song as iconic as ‘How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)’ in the terms of the reality of Gaye’s life at the time of its popularity. The lyrics, a happy platitude, begin to feel like a projection of a dream which can never quite come true for the singer — and as Gaye grew in stardom, the song only became less real, instead of taking a turn for truth:

As the ’70s began, Gaye entered his auteur period, breaking out of the Motown mold with What’s Going On. In 1973, at age 33, he fell in love once more, with a 16-year-old named Janis Hunter. A year later, they had a baby together. Gaye and Anna were still married. Finally, in 1975, as Hunter became pregnant with another child, Anna filed for divorce.

She had the right to be fed up, but the timing also made sense in the greater context of American marriage. In ’75, the number of divorces and annulments in the U.S. exceeded one million for the first time, more than doubling the tally from just a decade before. Reasons for the uptick were plentiful: evolving social mores, the declining role of religion, laws that simplified the process, and an overall sense of personal entitlement. In a previous generation, Gaye’s mother considered divorcing her husband, who never really loved Marvin and beat him relentlessly as a child, but she didn’t out of what she called “loyalty and responsibility.” But times had changed. “This is an era in which many Americans are far more concerned with their rights than with their responsibilities,” declared a 1976 New York Times article titled “Divorce Epidemic,” “and also a time when little premium is put upon patience or accommodation to less than ideal situations.”

It’s interesting to think of the role that culture played in a marriage like Marvin Gaye’s. Born into an abusive relationship, Gaye watched his father abuse his mother again and again. Yet instead of growing into a man who despised spousal abuse, he became a self-proclaimed chauvinist and serial womanizer. Where his mother could not escape the relationship she felt trapped in, Gaye’s own wife could. She divorced him, and asked for the money she felt owed:

Gaye was terrible with money, often investing in bogus schemes and blowing untold sums on pot and coke, so when Anna asked for $1 million, he simply didn’t have the funds. So his lawyer proposed an interesting solution: Gaye would pay $600,000, half of which would come from the advance for his next album, with the other half coming from that album’s royalties. It was an insane idea. Of course Gaye agreed to it.

And thus, what I would consider Gaye’s most incredible work was made:

Though birthed from contentious circumstances, the album still retains its power because it’s not just a heated diatribe, a peeved he-said to infinity. Unlike some of Gaye’s real-life actions, the album is nuanced, thoughtful, progressive.

After a scene-setting intro — “I guess I’ll have to say this album is dedicated to you” — the story begins in earnest with, fittingly, a doo-wop song. “I Met a Little Girl” boasts all the longing and vocal stacking of Gaye’s beloved ’50s music, but with the perspective flipped — he’s singing not as a green teen but as a man in his late 30s who has tried and failed at love, and is no closer to figuring it out. Gaye exquisitely sings all of the parts himself, creating an echo chamber of hurt. Though the singer spoke out against the women’s liberation movement of the era, there’s a generousness to his voice and sentiments, and a shared blame. “Then time would change you,” he squeals, “as time would really change me.” The song is nearly zen in its wistfulness, with a sumptuous arrangement and languid pace. Later, on a track called “Anger,” Gaye still takes the longview, condemning the soul-destroying properties of rage rather than giving into them. Perhaps the slow crumble of Gaye’s marriage across more than a decade allowed him a certain distance, and a way to make this very personal album feel like much more than one man’s loss.

Art worth listening to.