Here, My Dear

A double album recorded at Gaye's own studio in Los Angeles in 1977 and 1978 and released on Tamla on 15 December 1978. Anna Gordy had sued for divorce in November 1975, and in March 1977 Gaye's attorney persuaded him to give her half of the royalties from his next Motown album. Gaye said he first meant to make a quick record, since Anna would end up with the money, but the idea took hold and came to fascinate him. He began on 24 March 1977 with only the engineer Art Stewart, made up lyrics on the spot over prerecorded tracks, and played all the keyboards himself. The cover is a painting by Michael Bryan of Gaye in a toga, and on the back a temple marked matrimony collapses.

The album reached number four on the R&B chart and number 26 on the pop chart, the lowest for any of his 1970s studio albums, and Gaye refused to promote it further. Anna Gordy threatened a suit for invasion of privacy that never came. Robert Christgau called it a fascinating, playable album and a weird one. In a Sunday Review for Pitchfork, Ryan Dombal wrote that it keeps its power because it is not just a heated diatribe, and called A Funky Space Reincarnation, the single, an out-of-place misstep. Rolling Stone ranked it 462 in 2003 and 493 in 2020, and a 1994 reissue reached number one on Billboard's R&B catalog chart.