đȘ© Marvin Gaye's Got To Give It Up: The Disco Hit He Never Wanted To Make
The Twelve Inch 219 - The A Side (Extended) : Got To Give It Up (Marvin Gaye)
Sometimes you witness history without realising it.
One evening in the early eighties, me and a friend were sitting in Brussels watching Diana Ross perform. It wasnât exactly a disco concert. More Las Vegas than Studio 54. The kind of show where you could happily bring your mum, literally in our case, because both our mothers had joined us. Thatâs a story for another time. đ
Fresh from the success of her Diana album, produced by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, Ross opened with Iâm Coming Out before taking us on a journey through her solo hits and the Supremes years.
Then something completely unexpected happened.
A man walked out of the front rows, climbed onto the stage and headed straight for Diana. For a brief moment she looked almost as surprised as the audience.
The man was Marvin Gaye.
The two embraced and sang Reach Out together before Marvin quietly disappeared backstage again.
At the time it felt like a lovely surprise appearance. Only years later did I realise I had witnessed something far more remarkable. Marvin Gaye wasnât touring Europe. He wasnât promoting a new record.
He was living in Belgium.
And, without any of us knowing it, he was quietly rebuilding both his life and his career. In hindsight it was one of the last genuinely hopeful chapters of a story that would end in tragedy barely two years later.
đ Welcome, Iâm Pe Dupre, thanks for stopping by.
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đ§đȘ From Belgium Back To The Top
By 1981 Marvin Gaye desperately needed somewhere to disappear.
Years of personal turmoil had taken their toll. A painful divorce, mounting debts, battles with the IRS and an escalating cocaine addiction had pushed one of soul musicâs greatest talents to breaking point. Belgium offered something Los Angeles never could.
Peace.
Ostend in the eighties
Invited by Ostend promoter Freddy Cousaert, Marvin found anonymity on the Belgian coast. He started running on the beach, boxed to stay fit, returned to church and gradually rediscovered the desire to make music. That fresh start would eventually produce Midnight Love and the worldwide smash Sexual Healing.
Ironically, that was also my own introduction to Marvin Gaye.
By then I had just started presenting programmes on our local radio station. Whether I particularly liked a record wasnât really the point. If you wanted listeners, you played the hits, and Sexual Healing was one of the biggest hits of 1982.
Only much later did I begin exploring the rest of Marvinâs catalogue. And what a catalogue it turned out to be. Whatâs Going On. Letâs Get It On. I Want You⊠Masterpieces that revealed an artist constantly reinventing himself while remaining unmistakably Marvin Gaye.
As I dug deeper, I also discovered something that fascinated me. Marvin Gaye influenced dance music. Dance music influenced Marvin Gaye.
But Marvin Gaye never really wanted to become a disco artist. Which makes todayâs record one of the great contradictions in dance music history.
Because his biggest contribution to disco almost happened against his own wishes.
đȘ© Motown Wanted Disco. Marvin Wanted Marvin.
By the end of 1976 disco had become impossible to ignore. What had started in New Yorkâs underground clubs had become mainstream. Dancefloors were packed, radio stations had embraced the sound and every major record company wanted a piece of the action.
Motown certainly did.
After Diana Ross scored a huge international success with Love Hangover, Berry Gordyâs label encouraged virtually all of its biggest stars to embrace disco. Marvin wasnât convinced. He loved groove. He loved rhythm. He loved records that made people move. What he disliked was music that sacrificed soul for fashion.
David Ritz quotes him remembering Motownâs relentless pressure:
âMotown was screaming disco at me. Disco disco disco disco! I couldnât be botheredâ
He would later insist that Got To Give It Up wasnât really disco at all, preferring to call it âfunk with a party groove.â Whether you agree or not is almost beside the point. The irony is that, while trying not to make a disco record, Marvin Gaye ended up making one of the most influential dance records of the entire decade.
The Twelve Inch is the story of how dance music kept reinventing itself, often by accident.
This might be one of its greatest accidents.
đż The Fourth Side That Changed Dance Music
Ironically, Got To Give It Up almost never existed. Motown had recorded Marvinâs concerts at Londonâs Palladium in October 1976 and planned to release them as a live album. Marvin insisted it should become a double album.
There was only one problem. The concerts filled just three sides of vinyl. A fourth side still needed music.
Sometimes the greatest records are born from artistic inspiration.
Sometimes theyâre born because thereâs empty space on a piece of vinyl.
Producer Art Stewart remembered a groove Marvin and drummer Bugsy Wilcox had been playing around with months earlier. Stewart immediately recognised its potential and, determined not to let it disappear, even visited Marvin on Christmas Day to persuade him to finish it.
Thankfully, he did.
Recorded in December 1976, Got To Give It Up sounded unlike almost anything else on the dancefloor. The groove was hypnotic. The bassline irresistible. But what really set it apart was the atmosphere.
Rather than creating a polished studio production, Marvin and Stewart left the microphones open while friends, musicians and family wandered around the room talking, laughing, clapping and enjoying themselves.
You donât just hear a song.
You hear a party.
Nearly fifty years later it still feels like youâve just walked through the front door. And thatâs precisely where the story really begins.
đ¶ A Party You Can Hear
One of the reasons Got To Give It Up still sounds so fresh today is that it never tries too hard. Thereâs no sense of a producer meticulously constructing the perfect disco record. Instead, it feels wonderfully accidental.
Almost documentary-like.
The voices you hear throughout the record arenât carefully scripted backing vocals. Theyâre friends, family and musicians enjoying themselves in the studio. Conversations, laughter and spontaneous reactions became part of the recording.
Even Soul Train presenter Don Cornelius makes a cameo, with Marvin greeting him as he walks into the room.
The result is extraordinary.
Rather than transporting the dancefloor into the studio, Marvin brought the studio onto the dancefloor. Itâs a subtle distinction, but an important one. Most disco records invite you to dance.
Got To Give It Up makes you feel as though the party has already started, and all you have to do is join in.
That loose, organic atmosphere would become hugely influential. Long before house music producers started adding crowd noise, live percussion and snippets of conversation to create atmosphere, Marvin had already shown how powerful those little imperfections could be.
Sometimes perfection lies in sounding imperfect.
đș The Shy Man Who Wrote The Ultimate Dancefloor Invitation
Thereâs another irony hidden inside the song.
Listen to the opening lyrics.
Marvin sings about someone standing against the wall at a party, too nervous to dance while everyone else is having a good time. Only gradually does he gather the confidence to step onto the floor.
For years I simply assumed it was another cleverly observed lyric.
Then I came across an anecdote in David Ritzâs biography that suddenly made everything click. A couple of years after the record became a worldwide hit, Marvin was visiting a nightclub in San Francisco. Michael Jacksonâs Off The Wall was playing and, despite clearly enjoying the music, Marvin stayed exactly where he felt most comfortable.
At the bar.
When the DJ eventually put on Got To Give It Up, his own friends dragged him onto the dancefloor. Ritz recalled watching one of the greatest performers of his generation looking strangely uncomfortable, almost shy, dancing to his own biggest dance hit.
Itâs one of those wonderfully human moments.
The man who persuaded millions of people to dance never completely felt at ease doing it himself. Suddenly the opening lines of Got To Give It Up feel less like storytelling and more like confession.
đ When The Dancefloor Decides
Whether Marvin accepted the disco label eventually stopped mattering. The audience had already made up its mind.
Got To Give It Up became his third and final American number one, topped the UK charts, dominated dancefloors around the world and remains one of the defining records of the disco era.
Perhaps Marvin himself summed up the contradiction best when he looked back on the whole experience.
âI stuck my nose in the air,â recalled Gaye, âand said, âFuck it,â but donât you know that in the end, I did what [Motown] wanted â my way.â
Those last two words matter.
My way.
Because despite Motownâs pressure, despite the commercial ambitions and despite Marvinâs own reluctance, Got To Give It Up still sounds unmistakably like Marvin Gaye. Nobody else could have made this record.
đ§ The Groove That Refused To Grow Old
Its influence didnât stop in 1977. Even todayâs producers continue to chase that same effortless combination of groove, warmth and spontaneity.
Its most famous afterlife arrived almost four decades later when Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams released Blurred Lines.
The ensuing lawsuit became one of the most talked-about copyright battles in modern music, with Marvin Gayeâs estate successfully arguing that the newer hit had borrowed too heavily from the feel of Got To Give It Up.
The verdict divided musicians and lawyers alike.
But one thing became undeniable. Nearly forty years after its release, people were still trying to recreate the atmosphere Marvin had captured almost by accident.
Thatâs an extraordinary legacy.
And perhaps the greatest compliment any artist can receive.
đïž More Than A Disco Record
So...
Was Got To Give It Up actually a disco record?
Marvin would probably have answered no. Most DJs would answer yes. The truth, as so often, lies somewhere in between.
It has discoâs pulse. It has funkâs looseness. It has soulâs emotional depth.
And perhaps thatâs exactly why it has aged so much better than many records that fitted the disco template more neatly.
Marvin Gaye didnât simply follow a trend. He absorbed it. Reshaped it. And made it unmistakably his own.
The Twelve Inch is the story of how dance music kept reinventing itself, often by accident. Few records illustrate that better than Got To Give It Up. A song born because a double album needed a fourth side. A record made by an artist who didnât particularly want to make a disco record.
Yet somehow it became one of the greatest dance records ever committed to vinyl.
The best dance records don't always come from artists trying to make dance records. Sometimes they come from artists simply trying to make the best record they can.
The Twelve Inch is a growing community of people who love disco, eighties, and early-nineties dance music.
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đïž Coming Up On The B-Side...
Marvinâs relationship with disco didnât end here.
Neither did his remarkable Belgian story.
On this weekâs B-Side weâll travel to Ostend, where Freddy Cousaert helped one of soul musicâs greatest talents rebuild his life. Weâll discover how Sexual Healing was born on Belgian soil and explore why Motown, despite being one of the worldâs greatest soul labels, never became one of discoâs dominant forces.
Weâll also take a closer look at the remarkable afterlife of Got To Give It Up, from the many artists who covered or reinterpreted the song to the landmark Blurred Lines court case that reignited the debate about where inspiration ends and copyright begins.
And finally, weâll ask one of music historyâs most intriguing questions.
What if Marvin Gaye had lived?
As always, thereâs also a new companion mix waiting in the Dub section, placing Got To Give It Up alongside the records that shaped it and the artists it would go on to inspire.
The B-side is where we go deeper.
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đŹ Over To You
Did you always think of Got To Give It Up as a disco record?
Where does it rank among Marvin Gayeâs greatest recordings?
And can you think of another artist who accidentally changed the course of dance music while trying to do something completely different?
Iâd love to hear your thoughts, memories and discoveries in the comments.
So You Wanna Hear More ?
I thought you would !
Itâs fun to write about music but letâs be honest. Music is made to listen to.
Every week, together with this newsletter, I release a 1 hour beatmix on Mixcloud and Youtube. I start with the discussed twelve inch and follow up with 10/15 songs from the same timeframe/genre. The ideal soundtrack forâŠ. Well whatever you like to do when you listen to dance music.
Listen to the Soundtrack of this weekâs post on MIXCLOUD
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