Marvin Gaye

Marvin Gaye was an iconic two-time Grammy-winning American singer, songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer who gained international fame as an artist on the Motown record label in the 1960s and 1970s. Marvin began his career at Motown in 1961. He quickly became Motown's top solo male artist and scored numerous hits during the 1960s, among them "Stubborn Kind of Fellow", "How Sweet It Is ", "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", and several hit duets with Tammi Terrell, including "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "You're All I Need to Get By", before moving on to his own form of musical self-expression. Gaye is notable for fighting the hit-making, but creatively restrictive, Motown record-making process, in which performers and songwriters and record producers were generally kept in separate camps.

With his successful 1971 album What's Going On and subsequent releases including Trouble Man and Let's Get It On, Gaye, who was a part-time songwriter for Motown artists during his early years with the label, proved that he could write and/or produce his own albums without having to rely on the Motown system. He is also known for his environmentalism, perhaps most evident in his song "Mercy Mercy Me ".