“Got to Give it Up” chronicles the nervy night of a man too shy to get out there on the dance floor and let loose. It’s only once he gives in – or Gives it Up – to the rhythm and finds himself a partner to groove with that he starts to enjoy himself. The song’s lyrics were inspired by Marvin Gaye’s documented stage fright and anxiety that afflicted him throughout his career during performances.

The song became a No. 1 hit in 1977 and propelled the live performance album it was released on, Live at the London Palladium, to an impressive two million sales.

“Got to Give it Up” became the subject of a resurgence of public interest after Marvin Gaye’s estate was awarded $7.4 million in damages in a 2015 lawsuit that found Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams guilty of breaching copyright for their incorporation of the song into their hit single “Blurred Lines”.

As David Ritz, Marvin Gaye’s biographer, wrote in Rolling Stone in 2013:

The vast majority of those singers – with Thicke standing as the most recent example – are so eager to emulate Marvin’s lush sensuality that they miss the single ingredient that lends Marvin’s artistry its spiritual power: his nuanced sense of autobiographical storytelling. Take “Got to Give It Up.” Like “Blurred Lines,” it was an across-the-board Number One hit. Marvin wrote it in 1976 at the height of the disco craze. Rather than follow the craze, he fought the craze, crafting an idiosyncratic groove completely foreign from the four-on-the-floor beat that typified disco. Even more radical was the story he told on top of the beat – a tale of a man, much like Marvin, who’s deadly afraid of dancing. Gaye paints the portrait of a wallflower “too nervous to really get down,” a shy guy whose “body yearned to be free.” The song becomes a vehicle to face his fear. And the infectious groove allows him to overcome the fear.