I WANT YOU
| Marvin Gaye
I WANT YOU
I Want You is the fourteenth studio album by American soul musician Marvin Gaye, released March 16, 1976, on Motown-subsidiary label Tamla Records. Recording sessions for the album took place throughout 1975 and 1976 at Motown Recording Studios, also known as Hitsville West, and Gaye's personal studio Marvin's Room in Los Angeles, California. The album has often been noted by critics for producer Leon Ware's exotic, low-key production and the erotic, sexual themes in his and Gaye's songwriting. The album's cover artwork adapts neo-mannerist artist Ernie Barnes's famous painting The Sugar Shack (1971). -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
2016 - With its ambient soundscapes, yearning melodies, experimental tempos, elegant chord changes, and haunting lyrics, the album is, for my money, the sexiest rhythm and blues record ever made.
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Rolling Stone
1976 - But there’s no fire here, only a well-concealed pilot light.
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All Music
the most astonishing things about I Want You are its intimacy (it was dedicated to and recorded in front of Gaye's future second wife, Jan), silky elegance, and seamless textures
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BBC
2003 - It gives us a chance to see Marvin's complex and contradictory character in even more detail than before.
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Jude Warne
2015 - Gaye’s vocals are characteristically beautiful, soft and melodic, and they push against the busy soundscape of instrumental backing.
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Uncut
2003 - if I Want You isn’t the nonpareil bedroom classic that album was, it’s pretty close
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Independent
2011 - Gaye's symphonic ambitions are still evident, particularly in the meticulously segued side-one suite, with its recurrent themes and echoes tying together the songs into one cohesive, powerful expression of social concern
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Robert Christgau
I mean, if you're into insisting on sex it's in bad taste to whine about it.
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Wilson & Alroy's Record Reviews
Gaye was very short on ideas at this point: conceptually it's just Let's Get It On Some More.
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OO Cities
but this was another eminently listenable, consistently creative showcase for some talented composers and a truly terrific singer
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Starling
He really comes into his own, as this disc sounds nothing like his earlier, tentative records.
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