unpublished songs by the singer found in Belgium 40 years after his death

Demos recorded by the American singer in Ostend, where he took refuge to record his classic Sexual Healing, have resurfaced.

Unreleased songs by Marvin Gaye were found in Belgium, in Ostend, where the American singer took refuge in the early 1980s to record his classic Sexual Healing, reports the BBC.

Alex Trappeniers, lawyer for the family of Charles Dumolin, a Belgian musician who hosted the American artist for eighteen months in this seaside town, claims to have in his possession “30 tapes” containing “66 demos of new songs”.

“Some of them are complete and others are as good as Sexual Healing because they were made at the same time,” Alex Trappeniers enthused to the British media.

“There is a song. I listened to ten seconds and I had the tune in my head all day. The lyrics too. It was perfect,” he added, specifying that he wanted to “share the music of Marvin with the whole world”.

Who to operate the bands?

It remains to be seen who can exploit these tapes: the heirs of Marvin Gaye or the family of Charles Dumolin? “I think both could be winners,” the lawyer said. The BBC contacted the singer’s children’s lawyer without success.

This announcement was made on Monday April 1, the fortieth anniversary of the death of the American singer whose album What’s Going On is considered by Rolling Stone magazine to be the best album of all time.

Four posthumous albums by Marvin Gaye have been released since his death: Dream of a Lifetime (1985), Romantically Yours (1985), Vulnerable (1997) and You’re the Man (2019), a record recorded in 1972 which Gaye had canceled in the time of the release.