It's between Inner City Blues and What's Happening Brother. Not Let's Get It On would be a tough one.

LittleBLUECorvette said:

You ain't just whistlin' dixie, brother! It's like a tie between "Just to Keep You Satisfied", "Keep Gettin' It On" and "If I Should Die Tonight".

Timmy84 said:

Damn, I don't even think those are my top three.

Please Stay
Come Get To This
Your Sure Love to Ball


Damn, let me bust out my Marvin disc, I played this album in about 2-3 months.

LittleBLUECorvette said:

Great songs too. I love his falsetto scat at the end of "Please Stay" and who can mistake the jazzy doo-wop of "Come Get to This"!?!

My favorite would have to be between Save the Children and Inner City Blues. But how could you deny the brilliance of this whole album by singling out your favorite tune? Actually, the whole WGO album plays like a long and powerful 35-minute song. It's meant to be listened as a whole, without any new configurations.

Anyway, Save the Children is a very emotional plea for love for children. What has always amazed me was the way Marvin recorded both a spoken word recitation of this song and a vocal version mixing the two vocals together featuring Marvin's soft-spoken vocals on one side and his expressive tenor on the other. I also love the saxophone lines near the end, where Marvin sings, "SAVE THE BABIES!!"

And what can I say about Inner City Blues? Quite possibly the most definitive and realistic depiction of ghettos in America ever laid on wax.
[Edited 11/6/07 22:28pm]

Timmy84 said:

The Let's Get It On album nearly was as good as WGO, but I Want You easily tops LGIO by a long shot.

Just To Keep You Satisified is my jam!!!

You were my life, my hopes and dreams
For you to understand what this means
I shall explain
I stood all the jealousy all the bitching too
Yes I forgot all once in bed with you
Ooh darling how could we end up like this
Ooh baby let me reminisce

Classic hard-hitting lines right there!

silverchild said:

I always said that was one of the greatest songs of all time. It's full of raw emotion, vulnerability and pain etched in such a beautiful song. It's so powerful, man! But I agree, I Want You does top that album. IMO, Marvin could do nothing wrong musically in the '70s!

Timmy84 said:

That is so true! During this era, he evolved from a clean-cut singles artist to a creative genius putting nearly his whole life in his art, through his music. His whole 70's output was the essential "crack music"...

silverchild said:

His career went through so many incarnations it's not even fun. In the '60s, he was essentially a man who was the Nat King Cole of R&B. But by the '70s, he had made his falsetto gel more, had brought his vocals new dimension and was producing stuff that couldn't have been possible without him pushing for What's Going On to be released. Then he found success again in the early-'80s at a time when people thought his career was doomed. It's interesting to see how even with the craziness that was his life, he still managed to create such wonderful music in his all brief short life.

But in truth the '70s were his greatest period.

But you know a lot of biographers tend to think that he only "flirted" with social politics. IMO, a lot of stuff Marvin created WAS social, just in different circumstances.

What's Going On was about WORLD issues, of course.
Trouble Man was a soundtrack but it was a unique album because it parlayed an instrumental through the streets like Shaft, Black Caesar and Superfly did. "Cleo's Apartment" is a brilliant record.
Let's Get It On was all about physical love only for at least four songs, some others were love longing and love lost ("Just to Keep You Satisfied").
I Want You was the most erotic album he ever recorded.
Here, My Dear was of course the infamous "divorce" album but it also was complex because it featured a social conscious song about love ("Everybody Needs Love"), mortality ("Time to Get It Together"), God ("Sparrow") and outer space ("A Funky Space Reincarnation")

So really, he didn't really stop singing social issues, it was just in the context he was singing them in. He even added a social lyric to "Keep Gettin' It On" ("won't you rather make love, children/as opposed to war?"). But all these albums had a spiritual context to them even with the blunt sexuality.

Add on to the unreleased material: "Where Are We Going", "Double Clutch", "The World is Rated X", "Piece of Clay" and the modest charter "You're the Man", and you have an artist that was probably one of music's most complexed artists after Stevie Wonder, who was inspired by Marvin after What's Going On's big success.

magnificentsynthesizer said:

Fuck off.

Cloudbuster said:

Why?

magnificentsynthesizer said:

You guys ain't about to ruin this thread. Take it to General Discussion.

Timmy84 said:

Hey, I didn't start this.

Cloudbuster said:

start what?

magnificentsynthesizer said:

I've no idea.

Cloudbuster said:

Why?

magnificentsynthesizer said:

I've no idea.

Cloudbuster said:

i'm disappointed.

I would say it's a tie between "What's Going On" and "Inner City Blues."

Thirty-six years after the release of WGO, the lyrics to both songs are still true today; drugs, poverty and war are tearing the country apart and the ghettos of America due to poverty and the decline of the middle class makes me wanna holler.

incognito said:

Eloquently said.

incognito said:

Exactly! I praise Marvin for making the album!

I love "God Is Love" but I just wish it lasted longer. Everyime I hear it I'm loving it, but it's just over so quickly. Other than that I guess the title track and "Inner City Blues" stand out, but I always saw this album as one long piece rather than a collection of seperate songs.

midnightmover said:

You heard the original studio version of "God Is Love"? It should be in special editions of "What's Going On" or his "Anthology" set, it's in there.

Timmy84 said:

No, I've just got the standard one. How long is it on the other version?

midnightmover said:

It lasts 2:48, has a different key note, slower, has the trademark Motown drum beat, strings and only Marvin singing in lead and background vocals.