Songfacts®:

• "You're All I Need to Get By" was one of the last songs Marvin Gaye recorded with his ailing duet partner Tammi Terrell, (who would die of a brain tumor in 1970). Like most of their collaborations, it was written by the husband-and-wife songwriting team of Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, but it stood out from the other R&B-flavored tracks that defined the Motown sound. This number was heavily infused with a gospel style and incorporated vocals from a New York church choir.
• As a team, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell specialized in heartfelt duets like this one about finding strength as a couple. In real life, they were just good friends: Terrell was romantically involved with David Ruffin of The Temptations.
• The song's writers, Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, had a gospel background (they met in church) they brought to this song. "So much soul comes out of the Baptist church," she said in the Billboard Book Of #1 R&B Hits. "It's so embedded in you. You could go out any minute and turn the sweetest ballad into a gospel song if you felt real good about it."
  
  Ashford and Simpson, who also recorded as a duo, sang backup on the track, and Simpson played piano.
• This song inspired an updated version in 1995 by Method Man and Mary J. Blige called "I'll Be There For You/You're All I Need to Get By."
• "You're All I Need to Get By" plays a big role in the 2021 movie CODA, which won the Oscar for Best Picture. In the film, a girl whose parents and brother are deaf joins the school choir and is asked to sing the song as a duet with a guy she's crushing on. After singing it at a school concert, she sings it just for her dad, who puts his hand on her neck to feel the vibrations. When he asks her what the song is about, she replies: "It's about what it is to need another person," a theme throughout the film.