"Got to Give It Up" is Marvin Gaye using the language of surrender to describe the opposite. He recorded it in 1977 as a party track about a man who is shy at a dance and finally decides to let go. about the internal battle between wanting to join the fun and being too self-conscious to move. Marvin understood that the hardest dance move is the first one. After that, the body takes over. The giving up he describes is not defeat. It is release.