The room › Artists › Marvin Gaye
Where to start with Marvin Gaye
Start with Come Live With Me Angel — I Want You (Deluxe Edition), 1976. That is the track sitting closest to the centre of all 10 Marvin Gaye tracks in Zubissou Sounds — a listening room of 14,971 tracks placed one at a time by hand, not an algorithm.
This page is not a discography and not a ranking. It describes exactly one thing: the 10 Marvin Gaye tracks that one person put in one room, and where they sit relative to each other. The starting point above is chosen by a rule you can check — of the 10 tracks, it is the one nearest the average position on the four knobs the room runs on, and where two sit equally close the one on a named record wins. Nothing here calls any record better than any other.
The dates here run from 1967 to 2021. They are the dates attached to the releases in this room rather than recording dates, so the later ones are likely reissues — but 54 years is still more than one version of the artist.
The density knob swings 41 points across these tracks, the widest of the four — it is the axis this artist actually travels along in this room.
Three ways in
The one track, if you only play one
Come Live With Me Angel — I Want You (Deluxe Edition), 1976. Of the 9 Marvin Gaye tracks here that have actually been listened to, this one sits closest to the average of them across the four knobs the room runs on. The other 1 arrived carrying the default for their genre, and averaging a placeholder in would move the centre towards nothing. It is the least surprising thing among the tracks that were read, which is what an entry point should be.
If you want the sparse end
Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) — What's Going On - 40th Anniversary (Super Deluxe), 1971. The lowest density reading of any Marvin Gaye track in the room (40 out of 100). This is as far towards sparse as the collection goes.
If you want the wall end
Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing — You're All I Need, 1968. The highest density reading here, at 81 out of 100 — a 41-point swing across the collection towards wall.
Where Marvin Gaye sits in the room
Zubissou Sounds does not have playlists or genres you click. It has knobs. Every track carries a position on each one, set by hand when the track was added, and you find music by setting the room to a state rather than by searching for a name. These are Marvin Gaye's average coordinates and the range they cover.
| Knob | Average | Range | Low → high |
|---|---|---|---|
| mood | 75 | 64–83 | melancholy → euphoric |
| energy | 61 | 52–73 | ambient → driving |
| density | 60 | 40–81 | sparse → wall |
| head · body | 57 | 42–75 | cerebral → groove |
All four run 0–100. They are placed by a person, not derived from audio analysis or from any streaming service's feature data.
What is here, record by record
| Album | Year | Tracks |
|---|---|---|
| What's Going On | 1971 | 2 |
| I Want You | — | 1 |
| I Want You (Deluxe Edition) | 1976 | 1 |
| What's Going On - 40th Anniversary (Super Deluxe) | 1971 | 1 |
| Let's Get It On (Expanded Edition) | 1973 | 1 |
| You're All I Need | 1968 | 1 |
| United | 1967 | 1 |
| Funky Nation: The Detroit Instrumentals | 2021 | 1 |
Every Marvin Gaye track in the room
| Track | Album | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Ain't No Mountain High Enough | United | 1967 |
| Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing | You're All I Need | 1968 |
| What's Going On | What's Going On | 1971 |
| What's Happening Brother | What's Going On | 1971 |
| Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) | What's Going On - 40th Anniversary (Super Deluxe) | 1971 |
| Please Don’t Stay (Once You Go Away) | Let's Get It On (Expanded Edition) | 1973 |
| Come Live With Me Angel | I Want You (Deluxe Edition) | 1976 |
| Checking Out (Double Clutch) | Funky Nation: The Detroit Instrumentals | 2021 |
| Distant Lover | — | — |
| I Want You | I Want You | — |
Near neighbours in this room
These are the artists whose average knob position sits nearest to Marvin Gaye's in this room. It is a coordinate match, not a claim that they sound alike.
- Where to start with Bappi Lahiri — bollywood, 15 tracks
- Where to start with YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA — synthpop, 13 tracks
- Where to start with Arthur Russell — art pop, 17 tracks
What the open databases say
MusicBrainz lists Marvin Gaye as a solo artist, from Washington, D.C., the United States and born in 1939. Its contributors tag the artist soul, funk, smooth soul, motown and pop soul. These are the open database's facts, not mine — you can check them against the MusicBrainz entry.
Questions
How many Marvin Gaye tracks are in Zubissou Sounds?
There are 10, across 8 albums. 8 of them carry a date, running from 1967 to 2021. That is the whole of what this room holds — it is one person's collection, not a discography.
Is this a best-of, or a ranking?
No. Nothing here is ranked and no track is called better than another. The starting point is picked by arithmetic — the track closest to the centre of all the others on four measured axes — and the rule is printed above so you can disagree with it.
Where do the knob numbers come from?
They are set by hand, one track at a time, by the person who added the track. They are not audio analysis and not a Spotify feature. Mood, energy, density and the head/body balance each run 0 to 100. 9 of these 10 tracks have been read that way. The other 1 arrived with the default for their genre and nobody has listened to them yet, so they are left out of the centre, the ends and the spread quoted above.
Can I listen to these here?
Not yet from this page. Zubissou Sounds is in private beta — the room itself plays through Spotify, and 10 of these 10 tracks are matched to a Spotify ID and ready to play the moment you are in. The waitlist form is at the bottom of this page.