Marvin gaye vulnerable
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While the material was once again shelved (this time in favor of In Our Lifetime), Motown archivists rescued the lost recordings and released them in 1997 as Vulnerable. Undertaken during a period of tremendous success (the years of What’s Going On and Let’s Get It On), these were Gaye’s between-projects attempts to establish another identity — as an old school, ultrasmooth ballad singer.
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Gaye’s idea was to use — in a looser, more jazzlike context — the intricately woven multitracked lead vocals that made his hits so engrossing.
Even at his most explicit, the singer known for his era-defining calls to enlightenment (“What’s Going On”) and his heated bedroom pleas (“Sexual Healing”) ennobled love’s pain and transformed each injury into profoundly universal music. The Vulnerable Sessions, a collection of studio-orchestra ballads that he fussed over fornearly a decade, beginning in 1967, is a glimpse into the private aspirations of one of pop’s most anguished voices.
His second attempt took place in 1977, following the completion of the monumental Here, My Dear. His vocal tracks are doubled, sometimes tripled, giving the effect of velvet ribbons intertwined and fluttering mid-air.
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Tracks
- Why Did I Choose You - 1995 The Master Version
- She Needs Me
- Funny, Not Much
- This Will Make You Laugh
- The Shadow Of Your Smile
- I Wish I Didn't Love You So
- I Won't Cry Anymore
- Why Did I Choose You - Alternate Vocal Version
- I Wish I Didn't Love You So - Alternate Vocal Version
- I Won't Cry Anymore - Alternate Vocal Version
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Vulnerable
Since the beginning of his career Marvin Gaye had been a fan of vocalists like Billy Eckstine, Frank Sinatra, and particularly, Nat King Cole.
Dripping soul but singing with an understatement that puts him closer to Frank Sinatra than to Otis Redding, Gaye made every seduction a campaign, a quest, something worth carrying the torch for.
Yet Gaye never finished the album of torch songs that was close to his heart. There isn’t a more succinct description for this music. And yet, the focus here isn’t the big band — Gaye’s voice is an orchestra unto itself.
His first attempt at recording an album of jazz standards took place in 1968, but was quickly abandoned in favor of more saleable pop material (the abandoned recordings were issued in 1985 under the title Romantically Yours). Working and reworking standards as well as personal favorites, he twisted his vocals around sweet, keening string lines and squeezed fresh hurt from the already poignant melodies of such songs as Frank Loesser’s “I Wish I Didn’t Love You So” and the Johnny Mandel evergreen “The Shadow of Your Smile.”
As on his well-known works, Gaye broods audibly over the meaning of his lyrics on The Vulnerable Sessions. “Funny, Not Much,” for instance, finds him mulling over the moves of an unfaithful lover until his every sigh is suffused with bitterness.
Though he didn’t complete a full album of these songs, the seven restrained performances and three equally compelling alternate takes prove that Gaye could turn even the most hackneyed lounge-act tunes into forthright, spellbinding testimony.
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The singer holds the orchestra in his sway — a big band has never sounded so smooth or unobtrusive.Gaye left behind many brilliant recordings, but few bring you closer to his voice — his essence — than Vulnerable.
Vulnerable
There always was a bit of the crooner in Marvin Gaye.