Marvin Gaye - Vulnerable (1997)

Includes: Why Did I Choose You, 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, I Wish I Didn't Love You So. I Won't Cry Anymore

In the late '60s, Sinatra fan Gaye commissioned arrangements of several standards from pop-jazz composer Bobby Scott. Neither Gaye nor Scott was satisfied with the performances (though a number of the vocal tracks he cut at the time appeared on the posthumous album Romantically Yours), but in the midst of personal turmoil a decade or so later, Gaye returned to the tapes. Spinning a web of overdubbed voices, he found something in the likes of "I Won't Cry Anymore," "Funny, Not Much," and "Why Did I Choose You?" that transformed the songs into a corollary to Here, My Dear, the 1978 concept album that traced the tale of his shattered first marriage. As pained and beautiful as that set, if much less angry in its essential assumptions, Vulnerable is a brief (seven three-minute tracks plus three alternate versions) but potent document of Gaye's vocal mastery and emotional incisiveness. --Rickey Wright