Marvin Gaye: What's Going On (gatefold, 180g) [MOTOWN]

Why you'll love it

This edition comes on 180g vinyl in a gatefold jacket, pressed in the EU. What's Going On spent nine weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's Soul LPs chart, and its three Top 10 singles made Gaye the first male solo artist to land three Hot 100 Top 10s from one album.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Gatefold jacket
• Pressed in the EU
• Stereo mix

About the album

Motown was a hit factory with a house style, and in 1970 Marvin Gaye decided to step outside it. What's Going On was the first album to credit him as producer, and the first to name Motown's session players, the Funk Brothers, on the sleeve, which tells you something about how differently he wanted this one heard.

It plays as a song cycle, each track flowing into the next, told from the point of view of a Vietnam veteran coming home to a country he barely recognizes. The title song floats on a cloud of saxophone and chatter, "What's Happening Brother" and "Save The Children" follow the story, and "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" put environmental worries on the radio before most people had a word for them. "Wholy Holy" is pure gospel calm, and "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)" closes on a deep, rolling groove. Gaye recorded it in Detroit at Hitsville U.S.A., Golden World and United Sound, finishing in West Hollywood.

It stayed on the Billboard Top LPs chart for more than a year, and in 2020 Rolling Stone named it the greatest album of all time. Fifty-odd years on, the question in the title still gets asked in our shop daily, usually by someone holding this record.

Also at Kops: more Marvin Gaye on vinyl · browse Motown

Tracklist

Listen

On Tamla / Motown (cat# TS-310), a reissue of the 1971 album.