Everything about this track works: the finger clicks, Joe Messina's lead guitar doubling James Jamerson's slick bassline, the smooth doo-wop style backing vocals, and—obviously—Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's perfectly blended vocals.
Even though Gaye and Terrell weren't romantically involved, you kind of wouldn't know it, listening to this song. They sound like two people who are deeply in love.
Which is pretty heartbreaking if you know anything about Terrell's life.
Born Thomasina "Tommie" Montgomery in Philadelphia in 1945, she weathered a difficult childhood. On top of dealing with her mother's bouts of clinical depression and fallout from shock therapy treatments, she herself suffered from debilitating headaches, which foreshadowed her death at the young age of 29 from a malignant brain tumor.
She also was raped by several neighborhood boys as a pre-teen. As the TV One documentary Unsung: Tammi Terrell notes, in the wake of the incident, she decided she no longer wanted to be called Tommie and changed her name to Tammi. She even recorded a few songs under the name "Tammi Montgomery" before landing a contract with Motown.
Sadly, the traumatic event set the tone for her rocky relationships with men for the rest of her life.
In her late teens, she toured with and also dated James Brown for a time. Until he hit her. Repeatedly.
Then, after she signed to Motown Records (where founder Berry Gordy changed her name to "Tammi Terrell," simply because he thought it looked better than "Tammi Montgomery" on the label of a 45 single), she fell for the already-married David Ruffin of The Temptations. Unfortunately, Ruffin also physically abused her. Although, this time around, she hit back.
In truth, Gaye was one of the only men in her life who treated her with respect.
And when you hear the emotion come through in her voice on "Your Precious Love," it's clear that the relationship she's singing about is exactly the kind of unconditional, transcendent love that she desired.
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