Unreleased Marvin Gaye songs discovered 40 years after his death

Four decades after the death of Marvin Gaye, the Prince of Soul Music, a collection of 30 cassette tapes containing 66 of the singer’s unreleased songs was discovered in the city of Ostend, on the coast of Belgium.

The collection belonged to musician Charles Dumolin, who hosted Gaye there in 1981, while the singer underwent a period of detox. When Dumolin died in 2019, the recordings were passed on to his family, along with several objects that belonged to Gaye, including stage costumes.

Ownership Issues

The heirs, however, may have difficulties in making the release of the material viable.

The question is: who has the rights to the tapes with the “What’s Going on” singer’s songs? Belgian law says that after 30 years, any material becomes the property of the person who owns it, regardless of how it was acquired. However, this does not apply to intellectual property, which could lead to a situation where the Dumolin family owns the tapes but does not have the rights to publish the songs on them. This right would belong to Gaye’s heirs, who reside in the United States.

Not much is known about the new songs yet, but there is a lot of excitement surrounding an unnamed track, recorded shortly before Gaye wrote the hit “Sexual Healing.” This song was compared by Dumolin to a “moment of planetary alignment”.

Gaye, who began his career in the 1960s and achieved stardom in the following decade, went through a rough patch in the late 1970s and early 1980s, battling cocaine addiction. He moved to Europe in search of a fresh start, but unfortunately his life was tragically cut short when he returned to the United States, being killed by his own father in 1984 at the age of 44. Despite his untimely death, Gaye’s legacy lives on – and generating an average of 20 million monthly streams on Spotify.