Marvin Gaye’s "Let’s Get It On" Joins Interscope-Capitol’s Definitive Sound Series With One-Step Vinyl

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At the Definitive Sound Series, the hits just keep on coming...

Interscope-Capitol has announced that Marvin Gaye’s 1973 classic Let’s Get It On will be the next title in its premium audiophile vinyl series. The release arrives July 17 as a limited-edition, AAA, 180-gram One-Step pressing, cut from the original analog master tapes.

Marvin Gaye Let's Get It On album cover on red sleeve with black vinyl record, featuring a blurred singer image.

For those following along with us at The Sharp Notes, this series is not new territory. We have already spent time digging into the how and why of these releases with Tom “Grover” Biery, looking closely at what goes into building a modern audiophile reissue series: the source material, the mastering chain, the pressing choices, the packaging, and the broader question of how classic albums should be handled when they return to vinyl in high-end form.

This latest announcement feels like an important next step. Let’s Get It On is not just another well-known catalog title. It is one of Marvin Gaye’s defining statements, and one of the records that helped reshape the emotional and sonic language of soul music in the 1970s.

Originally released by Motown in August 1973, the album followed What’s Going On by two years but moved into very different territory. Where What’s Going On looked outward at society, conflict, ecology, faith, and moral responsibility, Let’s Get It On turned inward. It is sensual, personal, vulnerable, spiritual, and, at times, almost conversational. Gaye did not simply make a “romantic” record; he made an album about intimacy, longing, body, spirit, and the complicated space where desire and love meet.

The new Definitive Sound Series edition was mastered by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering and cut from the original analog master tapes. It is being pressed at Record Technology, Inc. by Dorin Sauerbier on Neotech VR900 D2 180-gram high-definition vinyl.

Orange Marvin Gaye album cover with his portrait and large text LET'S GET IT ON, plus EMI and Tamla Motown logos.

As with the previous DSS titles, this is a One-Step pressing, meaning the record is produced using a plating process that removes some of the traditional intermediate steps between lacquer and finished vinyl. The idea is to get the listener closer to the source, preserving more detail, space, and immediacy in the final pressing.

The edition is limited to 3,000 numbered copies. Packaging includes a custom slipcase with the original album artwork, a heavyweight tip-on gatefold jacket, and a certificate of authenticity outlining the mastering, plating, and pressing chain.

Musically, Let’s Get It On hardly needs an introduction, but it rewards revisiting. The title track became one of Gaye’s signature recordings, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album itself reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and became the best-selling soul album of 1973. Alongside the title track, the record includes “Come Get to This,” “Distant Lover,” “You Sure Love to Ball,” and “Just to Keep You Satisfied.”

Singer in a red knit cap and blue shirt belts into a microphone on a dark stage, expressive and intense.

That makes Let’s Get It On a natural fit for the DSS treatment. The series has already included titles by The Beach Boys, Beck, Lionel Richie, Nat King Cole, Dr. Dre, A Perfect Circle, R.E.M., and blink-182, giving it a deliberately wide lens. These are not all “audiophile records” in the old-fashioned sense. They are culturally important albums being reintroduced through an audiophile production standard.

A series like this works best when it does not simply polish familiar records for collectors, but asks what might still be uncovered in recordings we think we already know. With Let’s Get It On, that question is especially interesting. Marvin Gaye’s voice is one of the most intimate instruments in American popular music. Any edition that claims to bring listeners closer to that voice carries a certain responsibility.