Marvin Gaye And The Greatest Breakup Song Of All Time

Ever since H-Town said “listening to some Marvin Gaye all night long,” the legacy of Marvin Gaye’s music has been somewhat commercialized in ways that disgust me. “Let’s Get It On,” “I Heard It Through The Grapevine,” even “What’s Going On” a song that has never not been fitting for the times when it is played; all of these fantastic songs are no longer such. I mean, they’re still good, but tolerable? It’s honestly gotten to the point where I hear them and I don’t even listen to 30 seconds, I skip right along to the next song.

But this is not the case for the majority of Marvin’s catalog. Die-hard Marvin fans know Gaye was more than just some bedroom Lothario who was all about getting panties thrown at him. I mean, that was the life he lived, but I’m saying, his music went much deeper, and ran a gamut of emotions. For my money, his best moments on record aren’t about lust or even love, but rather, love lost.

If you’re someone who is actually interested in R&B beyond what’s playing today and what you heard on some “Body & Soul” compilation (no shade to those “B&S” compilations though. They’re excellent.), I urge you to listen to “Here, My Dear” and read the entire backstory of that album here.

When you’re done reading and listening to it, go listen to “Let’s Get It On” and you can either play that one from top to bottom or you can skip everything and go to the very last song.

In honor of Gaye’s born day (he would have been 73 had he not been killed at the hands of his father on April 1, 1984) I want to share “Just To Keep You Satisfied.” To my ears, this is Marvin Gaye at his best, his most honest. The song was originally recorded by a couple of Doo Wop groups as a dedication to lasting love, but when Gaye got his hands on the song, he took it somewhere else entirely. At the time Gaye was recording this song, he was going through a divorce from Anna Gordy, the pain and sadness of which is masterfully conveyed here by Gaye.

It’s a sneaky song so seductive you might want to make love to it, but one close listen to the lyrics and you realize this is a song for the times when love hurts us the most, when we tried as hard as we could to make it work and nothing worked at all. Most importantly, because it’s sung by a man, I always thought “Just To Keep You Satisfied” got at the heart of men’s frustrations with a failed relationship. Sometimes, we’re not sad it didn’t work out, we’re just frustrated; frustrated because we thought we got it right and we didn’t, and no matter who is to blame, getting love wrong is one of life’s worst pains.

Songwriters: GAYE, MARVIN P/STOVER, ELGIE ROUSSEAU/GAYE, ANNA GORDY

You were my wife, my life, my hopes and dreams
For you to understand what this means, I shall explain
I stood all the jealousy, all the bitchin' too
Yes, I'd forget it all once in bed with you
Ooo darling how could we end up like this?
Oh baby let me reminisce

Oh and when we, woo, stopped the hands of time
You set my soul on fire, my one desire
Was to love you and think of you with pride
And keep you satisfied, oh baby oh baby
We could not bear the mental strain
Leave you, I laugh at men too
Now you see how much you hurt me
But if you ever need me, I'll be by your side
Though the many happy times we had
Can never really outweigh the bad
Oh I'll never love nobody like I loved you baby

It's time for us to say farewell, farewell my darlin'
Maybe we'll meet down the line
It's too late for you and me, it's too late for you and I
Much too late for you to cry
It's too late for you and me, much too late for you and I
It's too late for you and me, much too late for you to cry baby
Ah we tried, God knows we tried
Now it's too late to live and love and ah it's too late baby
It's too late for you and me, much too late for you to cry
Oh oh ohhh it's much too late
Well, all we can do is, we can both try to be happy