Super Hits (Marvin Gaye album)


Super Hits is a compilation album by American soul singer, songwriter, and producer Marvin Gaye. It was released in 1970 by Motown's subsidiary Tamla Records and compiles Gaye's pop-R&B singles recorded from 1962 to 1969.

Cover art

The album's cover art is a cartoon illustration created by artist Carl Owens. It depicts Gaye as a muscle-bound superhero flying high in the sky and catching a cracked antenna from the WHIT radio station. A voluptuous, scantily-clad black woman is also shown clutching at his neck and waist for safety. Author and Gaye biographer David Ritz calls the cover "the perfect artistic expression of Marvin's mystique at that point of his career – Gaye as an established sex symbol".

Critical reception

Music critic Robert Christgau views Super Hits as the best album released by Motown and includes it in his "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings, published in . AllMusic's Ron Wynn regards it as "a fabulous anthology, one of the best ones Motown ever released".
A similarly titled compilation album was released in 2001 by Legacy Records and Sony Music, which The New Rolling Stone Album Guide warns is "not the wonderful 1970 Motown collection, now deleted, but a budget set of Midnight Love material".

Track listing

Side one
  1. "I Heard It Through the Grapevine"
  2. "Pride and Joy"
  3. "The End of Our Road"
  4. "Ain't That Peculiar"
  5. "Stubborn Kind of Fellow"
  6. "Can I Get a Witness"
  7. "How Sweet It Is "
  8. "That's the Way Love Is"
Side two
  1. "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby"
  2. "Chained"
  3. "You're a Wonderful One"
  4. "Try It Baby"
  5. "I'll Be Doggone"
  6. "Hitch Hike"
  7. "You"
  8. "Baby Don't You Do It"