Marvin Gaye at the Edge: How Ostend, Belgium Became the Unexpected Refuge Behind “Sexual Healing”

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A row of beach sheds on a sandy Ostend beach with urban buildings in the background.
A row of beach sheds on a sandy Ostend beach with urban buildings in the background.. Photo: Emmanuel Codden / Pexels

A legend in crisis

By 1981, Marvin Gaye was already one of the defining voices in American popular music, a singer whose recordings had helped shape the emotional vocabulary of soul. “What’s Going On,” “Let’s Get It On” and “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” had made him more than a star: he was an artist whose music carried sensuality, social conscience and vulnerability in equal measure. But public greatness often hides private collapse, and by the beginning of that decade, Gaye’s life had become painfully unstable.

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White beach huts line sandy dunes with shadows cast under the clear blue sky.
White beach huts line sandy dunes with shadows cast under the clear blue sky.. Photo: Jan van der Wolf / Pexels
A serene scene with seagulls on the sandy shore of Ostende, Belgium, against a city skyline.
A serene scene with seagulls on the sandy shore of Ostende, Belgium, against a city skyline.. Photo: Eduardo Torres / Pexels

Image credits: Emmanuel Codden / Pexels; Jan van der Wolf / Pexels; Eduardo Torres / Pexels.

1 minute read

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