I Want You (album)

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I Want You
Studio album by Marvin Gaye
Released	March 16, 1976
Recorded	Marvin's Room, Los Angeles 1975-1976, Hitsville West, Hollywood
Genre	Soul/Funk/Disco
Length	37:43
Label	Tamla T-6342S1
Producer	Leon Ware, Marvin Gaye
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link BBC (favorable) link Robert Christgau (C+) link iTunes (favorable) [1] Rolling Stone (favorable) link
Marvin Gaye chronology
Marvin Gaye Live! (1974) I Want You (1976) Live at the London Palladium (1977)

I Want You is a 1976 album by Marvin Gaye released on the Tamla (Motown) label. The album was his first recorded studio material released in three years and marked a change in direction for Gaye, leaving his trademark Motown soul for funky, light-disco soul.

[edit] Overview

[edit] Recording

By 1975, Marvin Gaye had come off of the release of his 1973 album, Let's Get It On, and a duet project with Diana Ross but much like the creation of Let's Get It On before it, had struggled to come up with an album to compete it with. And much like Let's Get It On, outside help came in the form of Leon Ware, a singer-songwriter who had found previous success writing hits for fellow Motown alum including Michael Jackson and The Miracles. Ware had been working on songs for his own album which he later titled Musical Massage, a collection of sexually erotic singles Ware had composed with a variety of writers including Jacqueline Hillard and Arthur "T-Boy" Ross, the latter collaborator, brother of Diana Ross. When Motown CEO Berry Gordy paid a visit to Ware, the songwriter was more than happy to play Gordy his selection of tracks. After hearing the songs, however, Gordy figured that Ware give the songs to Marvin. Leon and Marvin recorded the album in Marvin's newly-christened Marvin Gaye Studios, located in Sunset Boulevard. While the majority of the songs were conceived by Ware, the album transformed into a biographical centerpiece for Marvin, who was then in a long-standing affair with Janis Hunter, the mother of his two youngest children. Though it was often hinted that Let's Get It On was an album dedicated to her, Marvin cited this album as being dedicated to Hunter, with whom is believed to have been in the studio when Marvin recorded the project enhancing the emotion in Ware's seductive lyrics, according to critics.

[edit] Release and reception

While not as successful sales-wise as Gaye's previous landmark albums What's Going On and Let's Get It On, it sold in excess of 1 million copies in the U.S. thanks mostly to its "title track" which peaked at number-one on the Billboard Hot Soul Singles chart becoming Marvin's eleventh number-one hit on that chart while peaking at number fifteen on the Billboard Hot 100. The album's follow-up, the quiet storm track, "After the Dance (Vocal)", charted modestly peaking at number fourteen R&B and number seventy-four on the Hot 100 while the single, released as a double-A side to dance clubs, hit the top ten of Billboard's disco charts. "After the Dance" was hailed as one of Marvin's signature songs during the late 1970s and "emblematic for the final chapter of his career". I Want You became his fourth top ten album off the Billboard 200 and his fifth number-one album on the R&B chart. A few months after the album's release, Ware eventually released Musical Massage, but unlike I Want You, the album barely got any notice outside of R&B fans intrigued by Marvin's album to hear songs from that album's original creator. In 2003, an expanded edition of the album was released.

[edit] Influence

I Want You has also been noted by musicians such as from Todd Rundgren, Robert Palmer, Madonna, and, most recently, G-Unit. The careers of neo soul and R&B musicians such as D'Angelo, Musiq Soulchild, R. Kelly, Maxwell, Sade, and Prince show influence from the soulful sound and equally romantic and erotic lyrics of I Want You.

The album's cover features Ernie Barnes' painting The Sugar Shack which was also featured in the credit sequence for the 1970s sitcom Good Times. The cover was parodied by rap duo Camp Lo's 1996 debut album, Uptown Saturday Night.

[edit] Track listing

All songs produced by Marvin Gaye and Leon Ware

1. "I Want You" (Ware/Ross)
2. "Come Live with Me Angel" (Hillard/Ware)
3. "After the Dance" (instrumental) (Ware/Ross/Gaye)
4. "Feel All My Love Inside" (Ware/Ross/Gaye)
5. "I Wanna Be Where You Are" (Ware/Ross)
6. "I Want You" (Intro Jam) (Ware/Ross)
7. "All the Way Round" (Ware/Ross)
8. "Since I Had You" (Ware/Ross/Gaye)
9. "Soon I'll Be Loving You Again" (Ware/Ross/Gaye)
10. "I Want You" (Jam) (Ware/Ross)
11. "After the Dance" (Vocal) (Ware/Ross/Gaye)

[edit] Charts

Album - Billboard (North America)