1976 · Behind the Songs
A songwriter’s own album became Marvin Gaye’s — and a sofa became a vocal booth.
The song that opens I Want You was never meant for Marvin Gaye. Leon Ware had written it with Arthur “T-Boy” Ross for Ware’s own album, Musical Massage. Then Motown founder Berry Gordy heard the material and persuaded Ware to hand some of it over. Ware agreed, and Gaye suddenly had the title track of what would become his fourteenth studio album.
The sessions took place at Marvin’s Room, Gaye’s own new studio in Los Angeles — a room built for late hours and total atmosphere. According to Ware, Gaye sang his lead vocal lying on his back on a sofa. It sounds like a detail invented for legend, but it fits everything about the record: relaxed to the point of weightlessness, intimate to the point of overhearing.
The single that arrived on April 1, 1976, on the Tamla label was one of the most patient hits of its year. The album version waits through a 77-second instrumental opening before a word is sung, and the single version carries a different vocal take altogether. Every background voice on the record is Gaye himself, stacked into his own choir.
“I Want You” reached number one on the Hot Soul Singles chart, number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the top ten of the disco chart alongside “After the Dance.” It earned Gaye a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Male Vocal Performance; the award went to Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish.”
The song kept finding new owners. Jazzmen Gato Barbieri and Stanley Turrentine both recorded it in 1976, Madonna and Massive Attack reworked it for a 1995 tribute album, and Michael McDonald took it on in 2003. In 2022, Kendrick Lamar built “The Heart Part 5” around an interpolation of it. A song written for one man’s album, claimed by another’s, still refuses to settle down.