| That's the Way Love Is | |
| Type: | single |
| Artist: | Marvin Gaye |
| Album: | M.P.G./That's the Way Love Is |
| B-Side: | Gonna Keep On Tryin' Till I Win Your Love |
| Released: | August 7, 1969 |
| Recorded: | 1969, Hitsville U.S.A. |
| Genre: | Soul |
| Length: | 3:35 |
| Label: | Tamla |
| Producer: | Norman Whitfield |
| Prev Title: | Too Busy Thinking About My Baby |
| Prev Year: | 1969 |
| Next Title: | What You Gave Me |
| Next Year: | 1969 |
"That's the Way Love Is" is a 1967 Tamla (Motown) single recorded by The Isley Brothers and produced by Norman Whitfield.[1]
The single was later covered in a 1969 hit version by Marvin Gaye. It was his third consecutive million-selling solo hit after "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" and "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby" written by Whitfield and Barrett Strong. Whitfield took the up-tempo Isley Brothers record, and turned it into a slowed-down psychedelic soul opus. Like "Grapevine", Gaye delivers the song in an emotionally wrought fashion, approaching a preacher-like tone through which he tells a woman to "forget" her lover now that the lover has gone off to someone else.
The song peaked at #7 on the Billboard pop singles chart and held the #2 spot for five weeks on the soul singles chart in October 1969[2] [3] (it was held off by The Temptations' "I Can't Get Next To You"), eventually selling a million copies.