I Want You (1976)

Not much point trying to deny what this intends to be—a make-out album, pure and simple. Put it on, dim the lights. You can guess the rest. As it happens, I never had occasion to use it that way, but I certainly came to a near instant infatuation with it a few years after its release, picking it out of the library at a community radio station with which I was involved, taking it home and taping it, and playing it constantly for an intensely brief period. I suspect I'm in a minority here. It seems to be more widely agreed on as not one of Marvin Gaye's best, though co-producer Leon Ware tends to get most of the blame for that. Robert Christgau dismisses it with a C+. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that a lot of cocaine use was involved in the recording and production. And out of 11 tracks, the title song gets three variations (two labeled parenthetically as "intro jam" though in fairness both quite a bit shorter), "After the Dance" two versions (the first an instrumental that sounds like it could have been ripped out of the soundtrack of a porno). That accounts for nearly half of the tracks right there. You see how I'm throwing out the caveats and reasons to skip it. I understand the complaints, and I admit I find my interest fading on the second half. But still it remains so sexy and sweet even in its aimlessness, and when it connects it's like being emotionally clobbered in a fell swoop. It still sounds pretty good now too, with that lush swooning thing he kicked off with What's Going On and spent the rest of his career essentially going back to again and again. Even when the politics and humanity of that great breakthrough have arguably been debased, as here, it's sultry and seductive, distinctly and uniquely alluring, allusive, beautiful. The first three songs seal the deal for me out of the gate—"I Want You" proper, advancing like a theme stated, and then the lovely and appealing "Come Live With Me Angel," a knockout punch and at 6:31 the longest track here, and then finishing off with the instrumental "After the Dance." Later, I lost track of the album almost entirely, the tape went missing or bad at some point and I forgot about it, until recently. Nice to hear again.