*Here, My Dear* was released in December 1978. It was a double album—sprawling, confessional, sometimes painful, sometimes darkly comic—a direct address to Anna Gordy, in which Gaye laid bare the dynamics of their relationship with an intimacy that bordered on the indiscreet.
He later said he had initially intended “a quickie record with nothing heavy, nothing even good.” But as he worked on it, he became obsessed with the project. He said he felt he “owed the public my best effort.” He said he made it “out of deep passion.”
On release, it received mixed reviews and sold poorly—his lowest-charting studio album of the decade. Some critics found it “bizarre.” Anna Gordy reportedly considered suing him for invasion of privacy. The lawsuit never materialized.
After Gaye’s death, *Here, My Dear* was fundamentally reassessed. A 1994 reissue reached No. 1 on the R&B catalog chart. It now appears consistently on lists of the greatest albums ever recorded, recognized as one of the most unflinching artistic documents in the history of soul music.
But in 1978, Marvin Gaye was broke, addicted to cocaine, facing a mountain of IRS debt, and newly married to a woman seventeen years his junior.
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He had married Janis Hunter on October 10, 1977, in New Orleans. Some accounts suggested the marriage was partly motivated by tax strategy. Janis later said they married following a car accident they survived together—a moment that clarified for them, she said, what mattered.
Their relationship had already produced two children: daughter Nona Aisha Gaye, born September 4, 1974, in Los Angeles; and son Frankie Christian “Bubby” Gaye, born November 16, 1975. The couple had been living together since 1973.