Let's Get It On

It’s truly extraordinary that this album remained more or less an obscurity for 50 years after its 1974 release. It’s as good an example as you could hope to find of how the first imperial phase of reggae could adopt any and all kinds of songwriting and make it completely its own – but perhaps because the Anglo-American critical establishment were hyperfocused on the rockstar-like rebel music of Bob Marley, the values of less glaringly politicised Jamaican music weren’t so widely appreciated. However the interpretations here of Paul McCartney (“My Love”), Neil Young (a devastating version of Crazy Horse’s “Down by the River”, perhaps modelled a little on Buddy Miles’s 1970 R&B take) and of course Marvin Gaye on the title track are as good as reggae got in this period.