By 1976, the relationship between Marvin Gaye and his first wife,
Anna Gordy, had become estranged and was far from being repaired. Marvin, who was now carrying on an open relationship with singer
Janis Hunter, and Anna often accused each other of
infidelity over the years before his relationship with Hunter. Shortly after Marvin and Janis welcomed the second of their two children, Frankie, in November 1975, Anna filed for divorce. At this time, Marvin was running low on money because of an extravagant spending habit to support his lifestyle which included, among other things, a fleet of cars, several homes in and outside the country, and an increasing
cocaine habit. Marvin's spending habits had made it impossible for the singer to pay Anna money for
alimony and
child support for the couple's only son, Marvin III. Marvin's attorney Curtis Shaw came up with a solution to Marvin to give half the royalties he would earn from his next project to Anna. After agreeing to the deal, the singer went into his recording studio in an effort to give Motown a "lazy, bad" album starting sessions in the spring of 1976. However, as Marvin set on making the "lazy" album, the singer's deep emotions and bittersweet feelings for his soon-to-be former wife took over the music.
Songs included in the album didn't just deal with the singer's troubling marriage ("I Met a Little Girl", "Anna's Song", "You Can Leave, But It's Going To Cost You") but with other deep issues including anger management ("Anger"), Jesus ("Everybody Needs Love", "Time to Get It Together"), solace ("Sparrow"), space (the loosely funky "A Funky Space Reincarnation") and new love ("Falling In Love", the one song dedicated to Marvin's new wife, Janis). An
Allmusic reviewer later wrote of the music:
...the sound of divorce on record — exposed in all of its tender-nerve glory for the world to consume... Gaye viciously cuts with every lyric deeper into an explanation of why the relationship died the way it did... Musically the album retains the high standards Gaye set in the early '70s, but you can hear the agonizing strain of recent events in his voice, to the point where even several vocal overdubs can't save his delivery.
—Allmusic
