The 1970s File Feature
Come Get To This
Marvin Gaye's "Come Get To This": A Brief Holiday Gem from the Post-What's Going On Years In the autumn of 1973, Marvin Gaye was navigating one of the more c…
01 The Story
Marvin Gaye's "Come Get To This": A Brief Holiday Gem from the Post-What's Going On Years
In the autumn of 1973, Marvin Gaye was navigating one of the more complex creative and commercial periods in his career, a time when the transformative artistic achievement of What's Going On (1971) and Let's Get It On (1973) had simultaneously elevated his critical standing and complicated the expectations that surrounded every new release. "Come Get To This" was a single drawn from Let's Get It On, released on Tamla Records (the Motown subsidiary), and it entered the Billboard Hot 100 in early November 1973, climbing to a peak position of number 21 during a 13-week chart run that stretched through the holiday season and into the new year.
Marvin Gaye was born Marvin Pentz Gay Jr. in Washington, D.C., in April 1939 and developed his musical skills through gospel choir work before joining Harvey Fuqua's Moonglows in the late 1950s. He signed with Motown Records in 1961 and over the following decade became one of the label's most commercially successful and artistically significant acts, recording hits including "Heard It Through the Grapevine," "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," "Let's Get It On," and the landmark album What's Going On that fundamentally expanded the conceptual and political possibilities of R&B.
"Come Get To This" was written by Marvin Gaye and produced by Gaye himself, continuing the creative autonomy he had begun asserting with What's Going On after years of working under Motown's more controlled production model. The song appeared on Let's Get It On, Gaye's 1973 album that balanced the social engagement of its predecessor with a more explicitly erotic sensibility, creating one of the most celebrated albums in soul music history. Within that album's landscape, "Come Get To This" was a relatively lighthearted, playful track that demonstrated Gaye's ability to move between different emotional registers without sacrificing authenticity in any of them.
The song's arrangement featured the warm, layered production aesthetic that characterized the Let's Get It On album, with Gaye's voice harmonizing with itself through overdubbing techniques, creating the layered vocal texture that had become central to his sound following his increased production control. The instrumental arrangement was relaxed and intimate compared to the more orchestrally elaborate productions of some of his Motown contemporaries, reflecting the personal and direct quality that Gaye was increasingly pursuing as he gained greater control over his recordings.
The single debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on November 3, 1973, entering at position 82. It climbed steadily through November and December, reaching its peak of number 21 on the chart dated December 15, 1973. The song spent 13 weeks total on the Hot 100, a solid run that reflected consistent radio support across both R&B and pop formats. On the Hot Soul Singles chart, "Come Get To This" performed considerably better, reaching the top 5 and demonstrating the depth of Gaye's support with his core audience.
The release timing, with the song debuting in early November and peaking in mid-December, placed it in the context of the holiday season, when radio programmers balanced festive content with continuing pop and soul rotation. That "Come Get To This" maintained its chart trajectory through this competitive period reflected the consistent appeal of Gaye's artistry and the commercial strength of the Let's Get It On album campaign.
The album itself had been a massive commercial success, debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 in August 1973 and producing the title track, which also reached number 1 on the Hot 100. "Come Get To This" was the album's follow-up single, entering a market that was already well-acquainted with the project and enthusiastic about its contents. The song's modest pop chart peak at number 21 belied the depth of its R&B success and its lasting critical reputation as one of the stronger album tracks from one of the decade's most celebrated recordings.
Gaye's work during this period remains foundational to the development of quiet storm R&B and the more personal, intimate production approaches that would characterize much of the genre through the following decades. "Come Get To This" was a small but genuine contribution to that legacy, a recording that demonstrated the range and craft available to an artist at the peak of his creative powers.
02 Song Meaning
Invitation and Intimacy: The Personal Universe of "Come Get To This"
"Come Get To This" by Marvin Gaye operates in the intimate register that had become increasingly central to his work by 1973, a register defined by directness, warmth, and a quality of personal address that makes the listener feel as though the song is being sung specifically to them rather than to an abstracted beloved. The track is an invitation, simple in its emotional content but rich in its delivery, and Gaye's particular genius for making the personal feel universal is fully present in even this relatively brief and playful recording.
The song belongs to a tradition of invitation songs in soul and R&B, a lyrical form that combines desire with hospitality, that treats longing as something to be expressed through welcome rather than through complaint. This tradition has deep roots in blues and gospel, where the invitation is simultaneously personal and communal, where being asked to come close is also an act of generosity rather than merely demand. Marvin Gaye's formation in gospel music informs his approach to this material, giving the invitation a warmth that purely erotic invitations often lack.
The production choices on "Come Get To This" reinforce its emotional content. The layered vocal harmonies that Gaye created through overdubbing give the recording a quality of fullness and warmth that matches the lyric's invitation. When you are surrounded by multiple voices, all recognizably Gaye's own, the effect is of being enveloped rather than simply addressed. This sonic quality is an expression of the song's emotional intention: not just to invite someone close but to create a space of warmth and intimacy that justifies the closeness being sought.
Within the context of the Let's Get It On album, "Come Get To This" represents a somewhat lighter moment, a playful expression of desire within an album that also contained more sustained and complex explorations of erotic and romantic longing. This tonal range, the ability to move between playfulness and depth within a single album, was characteristic of Gaye's work during his most creatively autonomous period. "Come Get To This" demonstrates that the intimacy he was exploring in the early 1970s was not always serious or weighted; it could also be easy and light and joyful.
The song also demonstrates Gaye's understanding of rhythm and groove as emotional tools. The relaxed, intimate feel of the arrangement is not accidental; it creates a sonic environment that mirrors the kind of easy closeness the lyric is inviting. There is no urgency in the production, no pushing or straining toward its emotional object. The song assumes that what it is offering is desirable enough to attract without pressure, and that confidence is itself a form of warmth. This quality, of desire expressed without desperation, is one of the distinctive features of Gaye's work during this period that distinguished him from contemporaries who treated erotic content with more either more aggression or more anxiety.
"Come Get To This" is a song about the simplest form of romantic longing: the desire to be in the presence of someone who makes your life better, to close the physical and emotional distance between yourself and someone you want near you. Gaye delivers this simple wish with all the craft and authenticity that made him one of the great voices of twentieth-century American music, and the result is a recording that remains warm and immediate more than fifty years after it was made. The 1973 chart run captured it at the moment of its first delivery; the decades since have confirmed its durability.
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