You're All I Need to Get By
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"You're All I Need to Get By" was a 1968 hit for soul music legends Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. The song was a poetic ode to love between a man and a woman sung beautifully by the two singers even though they never had a personal love affair. Written by real-life couple Nickolas Ashford & Valerie Simpson, it became one of the few recordings in Motown that was not recorded with the familiar "Motown sound" of old. Instead, "You're All I Need to Get By" had a more soulful and gospel-oriented theme surrounding it.
The song became one of the last hits Gaye and Terrell recorded together as Terrell suffered from a brain tumor and would go through nearly two years of therapy and surgery before dying in 1970. The death crushed Gaye to the point that he threatened to leave the record business and become a football player, before he began the second phase of his career with What's Going On.
The original recording by Gaye and Terrell peaked at #7 on Billboard's Pop singles chart and #1 on Billboard's Soul (R&B) Singles chart for 5 weeks, becoming one of the longest running #1 hits in 1968. It would become the most successful duet recording of Marvin Gaye's entire career. Given its global appeal, it also reached #19 on the British singles charts in late 1968, staying there for 19 weeks. More than 25 years later, the song was re-invented for hip-hop audiences by Method Man and Mary J. Blige titled "I'll Be There For You/You're All I Need" that sampled "Me and My Bitch" by the Notorious B.I.G.. The song hit the Pop, R&B and Rap charts simultaneously leading to a Grammy award win for Best Rap Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group.
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