For Fans of Marvin Gaye

The case is easy to make and hard to argue against. In nine tracks Marvin Gaye created a suite that holds Vietnam grief, ecological dread, street-level poverty, and spiritual hunger in the same breath without ever feeling preachy or scattered. The production, with its layered voices and fluid jazz-soul arrangements by David Van De Pitte, still sounds modern. The album sold over two million copies in its first year and convinced Berry Gordy that artistic control could coexist with commerce. Every confessional concept album that followed owes it a debt.

Ordered by a court to hand over royalties to his ex-wife Anna Gordy as part of their divorce settlement, Gaye responded by making an album about the marriage itself: its tenderness, its betrayals, its grievances aired in painstaking detail. It was delivered on time and it is brutally, cathartically honest. Critics dismissed it in 1978; decades later it is widely recognised as one of the most singular breakup records ever made, a work that weaponised vulnerability before the word was common currency in music criticism.

Often overshadowed by What's Going On and Let's Get It On, the 1972 Trouble Man score is Gaye as a purely instrumental architect: cool, cinematic, urban, the sound of a man walking unhurried through a dangerous city. It is one of the great blaxploitation soundtracks and one of the few cases where the music completely eclipses the film it was made for. If you want to understand how Gaye heard space and texture, start here.