"Sexual Healing" (Marvin Gaye)

Listening to "Sexual Healing" and Marvin Gaye's absolutely ecstatic, silky smooth delivery, it's almost hard to believe that he was climbing his way out of one of the lowest points in his life during that period.  
In the years before he recorded the song for his "comeback" album Midnight Love (1982), Gaye had endured his second divorce, struggled with debt and problems with the IRS, and had wrestled with an addiction to cocaine.  On top of all that, he hadn't had a hit since "Blurred Lines" "Got To Give It Up" and was deeply depressed.
But he felt things were turning around by 1982.  He'd moved to Belgium at the urging of a friend and gradually began to kick his drug habit.  He'd landed a new recording contract with Columbia Records, cutting his decades-long ties with Motown and Berry Gordy.  He also was getting inspired by some of the new music he was hearing in Europe--particularly synth pop and reggae.
It's easy to hear both musical influences in "Sexual Healing's" syncopated electronic beat and synths.  It's also easy to hear the sound of an innovative artist and man, reawakened in his prime.  While he'd made euphemistic references to sex before (ex: "Let's Get It On"), he no longer minced words.  I found out only recently that there's a reason why 99.9% of radio DJs fade the song out quickly after the line Please don't procrastinate.  (Listen to the last few seconds of the song with the volume turned up, and you'll hear that Marvin apparently was borrowing a few moves out of the Rick James and Prince playbook, too.) 
Nevertheless, there's still a tenderness in the delivery that makes this song less about panty-droppin' and more about intimacy.  (Unfortunately, a lot of the slow jam purveyors that followed--particularly in the 90s--failed to get that subtle difference.)