Trouble Man

Marvin Gaye turned to soundtracks in the early '70s, and came out with one that ranked right alongside the epic scores done by Curtis Mayfield and Isaac Hayes. The film itself was a typical '70s "blaxploitation" effort, but Gaye's vocals, seamless production, and a nice mix of up-tempo funk, light ballads, and pseudo-macho camp were brilliant. The album, as with most Marvin Gaye LPs of the seventies, is centered around it's title track which in this case is a very mellow tune about a man who has "come apart" and is very much an autobiographical lyric of Gaye's as he claims the only things sure in life are "taxes, death, and trouble". Towards the end of his life he became very paranoid of assassination attempts on his life and his problems coupled with the fact that he had a mountain of debt apparently totalling in the millions. In many ways, Marvin Gaye was a troubled man.

From Last.fm, text available under CC BY-SA 3.0.