Marvin Gaye: What's Going On [MOTOWN]

Why you'll love it

Rolling Stone named What's Going On the greatest album of all time in its 2020 ranking. It was Gaye's first self-produced record and the first Motown album to credit the Funk Brothers, and all three of its singles went top ten.

This edition

• Single LP, 9 tracks
• Motown pressing of the 1971 album
• Produced by Marvin Gaye, with the Funk Brothers

About the album

Motown boss Berry Gordy reportedly called it the worst record he'd ever heard. Marvin Gaye refused to back down, and thank goodness for that. What's Going On, which arrived in May of 1971, is a song cycle told from the point of view of a Vietnam veteran coming home to a country riven by poverty, drugs and injustice, with the songs flowing into one another like a single long, aching prayer.

Gaye produced it himself (a first for him) and gave Motown's legendary house band, the Funk Brothers, their first album credit, and the sound is unlike anything the label had made before: lush strings, conga-laced grooves, saxophone sighs and Gaye's own voice multi-tracked into a choir of one. "What's Going On," "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" and "Inner City Blues" are the hits, but it's an album to be heard whole. Fifty-plus years on, it still sounds like it was made this morning.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Motown, a reissue of the 1971 album.