Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
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Free Music Notes for What's Going On
Free Music Review: "God Knows Where We're Heading" (and so did Marvin Gaye)
Hit: 5 Stars
1971. The sixties were over, but the Vietnam War wasn't. The Watergate break-in had not yet occurred, but faith in the U.S. Presidency had been eroding for several years. Crime as a matter of fact in daily life was slowly infecting the inner cities, following a decade marked by police brutality at the Watts riots in Los Angeles and the demonstration at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago (not to mention the National Guard at Kent State in 1970). The severe inflation of the mid to late-70s had not yet started to strangle the American economy, but that hardly made it any easier for those who were already suffering. Finally, the busing crisis, which attempted to integrate the races and ended up only dividing them further, was still on the horizon. Amid all of this, perhaps no single record in popular music more perfectly captured the transition from the idealistic 1960s to the painfully realistic 1970s than Marvin Gaye's What's Going On.
As almost all before me have pointed out, the title of this album was not meant as an interrogative statment, but a declarative one. He was not asking listeners what was going on, he was telling them. And yet, one cannot help but detect more than a mere whiff of disbelief and helplessness in his voice when he sings the title track. In that sense, one is surely not too far off the mark in hearing the words "what's going on" being sung with a question mark after them, even if they are printed on the sleeve without one.
The title track of Gaye's masterpiece sets the scene perfectly. When he sings "Brother, brother, brother, there's far too many of you dying", he is acutely aware that his fellow African-Americans accounted for a disproportionate number of the American troops in Vietnam. (Among whom was one of his own actual brothers, whose 3-year tour had ended in 1967.) Furthermore, the cry of "Father, father, we don't need to escalate" none too subtley suggests both the generational differences over political issues, as well as the personal differences between Marvin Gay, Sr. and his son (let us not forget how Marvin Gaye met his untimely death). Finally, the lyric "who are they to judge us/simply cause our hair is long?" rings a true note of solidarity with hippies, most of whom were white. In his own search for hope, Gaye embraces pure religion ("God Is Love", "Wholy Holy") rather than an amorphous spirituality, be it drug-induced or otherwise. But still, he is not so naive as to deny his own dependence on drugs or that of those around him ("Flyin' High"), which exists - at least in part - because of all of the things that he sings about on this album, and for the sake of escaping them.
The record closes with one of the best performances of his career, "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)", which serves to remind the listener one-by-one of the issues addressed by whole songs throughout the record. In terms of these issues, specifically the one on "Mercy Mercy Me", Gaye could really only take solace in the fact that the Clean Air Act, the EPA, and Earth Day were all established in 1970. While Gaye clearly had his finger on the pulse of the times, he was also very much aware of the consequences of the things he knew would never disappear as if they had never existed. Thus, if hope was more or less gone for the current generation of adults, we were at least obligated to "Save the Children".
What's Going On gave Motown a voice of protest, and a musical document as prophetic as anything Bob Dylan ever recorded. On "Inner City Blues", Gaye proclaimed, "God knows where we're heading". This is a particularly interesting statement coming from him. Considering that some of the worse crises of the 1970s were still to come, Marvin Gaye seemed to have a pretty good idea himself.
Free Music Review: Legend
Hit: 5 Stars
There are NO type of words to describe HOW beautiful this album is! I mean, people had been saying that for a while before I finally copped it around 2000 but when I finally heard the album with nine tracks in all its glory, I was floored! I mean, this is what a TRUE artist IS! Marvin Gaye is more than just a musical legend, he is a legend for the entire world. Each song he had done, he always knew how to invoke so much emotion, so much pain, so much hardship and still come out with a piece of beauty.Save Sam Cooke and Al Green, no other artist turned R&B upside down and made it personal better than the man hailed from the Chocolate City. With his 1971 album, "What's Going On", Brother Marv went from singing about NEEDING love all the time to singing about WANTING love not only for himself but also for the entire world from ghetto to ghetto, backyard to yard, country to country. Forget Elvis, Marvin was truly a rock & roll innovator. He proved Black artists can sing a full album full of personal anguish and make it touch you deep inside your heart.
No track is a filler and it's not so much the music but the message behind it that hits home. Telling a story of the singer's brother returning from Vietnam and asking that important question ("What's Going On"), his Rip-Van-Winkle sense of things-gone-by ("What's Happening, Brotha?"), his descend to drug abuse ("Flying High In The Friendly Sky"), and Marvin's own messages of trying to understand his place ("Right On"), trying to understand why the world is in such a disarray ("Mercy Mercy Me"), tormented because the children of the world are already going through terrible times while living in the ghetto ("Save the Children") to accepting Jesus into his life and also asking those not to question His majesty ("God Is Love") to embarking on a mission to conquer all hate ("Wholy Holy") and finally exposing the truth of his surroundings as poetically as he could in the streets ("Inner City Blues"--which is his landmark single IMO, but it's hard to choose THE landmark since Dude has had so many "landmarks"). This album told a STORY. It wasn't all out there like the work from the Beatles and the Beach Boys, less raucous than music from the Rolling Stones and the Temptations (who was going through a "psychedelic-soul" phase) and was just as serene as the music that would be released soon afterwards from these acts:
Issac "Black Moses" Hayes
Curtis Mayfield
His fellow Motown brotha, the Wonderful Stevie
Leon Ware (who would also produce a classic album along with Marv five years afterward)
And much, much more.
It also paved the way for Black acts to personally write about their own troubles like a book and not so much about pleasing youngsters but pleasing the soul within us. After Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye helped bridged the gap in Black music. This album remains his ultimate landmark but he was just getting started. This will be his decade to shine.
You know the only bad thing about it is that the man who inspired a lot of R&B, rock, pop, hip-hop and soul singers today is no longer with us to experience and tell us more stories about ourselves that before, we didn't have an idea or clue about, also his music is so timeless because the stuff that had happened when he recorded this in the late-'60s and early-'70s (Vietnam, civil rights movement, Black Panthers, etc), is still going on today in 2004 (Iraq, civil rights lawsuits, injustice among celebrities, the FCC, etc).
Long live Marvin P. Gaye, Jr. forever and ever!
My overall rating of this classic: 10+
As I said in the title, LEGEND is all that needed to be said! We love you and miss you, Marvin.
Free Music Review: A tour de peace.
Hit: 5 Stars
Using questions, gestures of friendship, and ghetto lingo, Marvin Gaye makes powerful statements against war, pollution, poverty, drug addiction, and government overreach.
The title track ("What's Going On") was a watershed in Vietnam-era protest music and for Motown Records. As Ben Edmonds's jacket notes explain, Gaye engaged in passive resistance (refusing to produce any more music) after Motown declined to release a single of "What's Going On." Gaye won the stalemate and so, eventually, did Motown after the song became a huge hit, giving the label its last smash before it left Detroit for Los Angeles. Motown's corporatist conformity and move to the Sun Belt were emblematic of trends blowing through American culture, trends so eloquently criticized by Gaye throughout the CD "What's Going On."
Gaye movingly articulates emotions of the bewildered man of G-d amid the Silent Majority. The overseas militarism and domestic caution of the 1940s and 1950s had crashed headlong into the counterculture and civil rights movements, sending people and institutions careening in all directions. Rising as a musical Martin Luther King, Gaye tried to pull the strands back together, using appeals to America's Christian heritage and our common humanity. The job was/is too much for any one man but Gaye left an imperishable testament that current and future generations would do well to absorb.
"What's Going On" the CD also displays notable worldly sophistication. "Inner City Blues" has the artist connecting hyper government spending and activity with rising taxes, shrinking economic prospects, and shorter physical life spans. (Give that man a Nobel Prize!).
"...No, no baby, this ain't living
No, no, no
Inflation, no chance
To increase finance
Bills pile up sky high
Send that boy off to die..."
Gaye implores America to get back to long-term thinking. Less than two years after the 1971 release of "What's Going On," the U.S. Supreme Court declared all unborn children nonpersons through its infamous Roe v. Wade decision. Surveying the ongoing abortion holocaust that has disproportionately impacted blacks (15 million black babies dead and counting), listening to "Save The Children" is eerie and deeply saddening (especially since Gaye's prophetic plea was ignored).
"...Live, live for life
But let live everybody
Live life for the children
Oh, for the children
You see, let's save the children
Let's save all the children..."
Driving home the point is a jacket photograph of the artist standing in an empty playground.
Besides peaceful tones and appeals to love in the tradition of Nat King Cole, the enduring appeal of Marvin Gaye's music is its overall hopefulness. What's the cure for America's meltdown? George Harrison called it "unfolding your love." Others might refer to it as uncompartmentalized religion. Marvin referenced it as "Wholy Holy."
"...Oh, Lord
We can rock the world's foundation
Yes, we can
Better believe it
Wholy holy together and wholy
Holler love across the nation..."
Free Music Review: The Most Beautiful Plea For Love And Togetherness Ever
Hit: 5 Stars
I beleive Stevie Wonder is one of the greatest musicians/artist to ever live. And I love a lot of the greats. The Beatles, The Stones, Pink Floyd, Zeppilin, Elton, EWF, Clapton, Prince. And to tell the God's honest truth, I am not a huge fan of Marvin Gaye. But I'm not stupid and I know greatest when I hear it. AND THIS ALBUM IS GREAT! It is so great that it is the only album out of all of the albums from my list of favorite artist that I wish Stevie would have done! It is the only album that I would put side by side with Innervisions or Songs In The Key Of Life. Some people say that the similarity of the music/vibe of What's Goin' On makes it sound monotonous and sometimes boring. Well they are wrong. The vibe of the album is exactly what makes it as great as it is. It's an exquisite suite of songs all linked together by that certain vibe. And it's a great vibe at that. Jazzy yet spiritual at the same time, the music gives it an almost otherworldly feeling. Because of the "vibe linkage" of the album, separating it song by song doesn't really work. It's almost like the album is a long form art song. Some "songs" only last 1 or 2 minutes as if they are passages to the next segment. You do have the standouts that were actually able to be released as singles. The title song plus "Inner City Blues" and "Mercy Mercy Me" were all songs that from the first fews notes, you could tell that they all came from the same album. "What's Goin' On" is the main theme with "Mercy" sitting in the middle as a thoughtful prayer and then finally "Inner" closing it out with some final thoughts. Three great similar sounding songs with similar messages. Yet the music, melody and lyrics are so haunting that you can't help but love them. Other "thoughts/links" as I call them like "What's Happenin' Brother" and "God Is Love" are standouts in their own right and should not be overlooked. The beautiful "Save The Children" is heartwrenching as is "Wholly Holy". No resolution you say? Wrong. The resolution is given to us in the middle of the disc in "God Is Love" and "Save the Children". If we realize and Do what's mentioned in these little 1 to 2 minute snippets the world would be a MUCH better place. All in all, this is an album you must experience. Words can only try to desribe it. So, is it BETTER than Songs In The Key Of Life? Probably not. On Songs Stevie goes around the world when you talk about musical themes. Not one song sounds like the other. Is it BETTER than Innervisions? Probably not again. Musically speaking and performance wise, "Living For The City" alone blows away anything and everything on What's Goin' On. So why is this album so honored and praised? As I said before, you have to experience it to understand it. This is an album that gets to your bones and into your heart and mind. You have to love it and appreciate it. It is spirituality and pure love coming together to give birth to this, a child named What's Goin' On.Free Music Review: The first and last great soul album
Hit: 5 Stars
It's generally regarded that the Beatles were the first group to make people think of an Album as one cohesive, artistic statement. A Beatles album was meant to be listened to in one sitting. All the songs were meant to create a larger body of work. This was an important deviation from the traditional method of creating an album, which was more or less a collection of singles with no particular relation to one another. This was an important concept in the sixties that influenced every other musician in every other genre with one exception. Soul music. Somehow, this important idea didn't extend to Motown or Stax. Soul musicians didn't write albums, they wrote songs, and of course when they had a dozen or so recorded, they released them as an album, but it wasn't the same thing. The albums didn't have running themes. They didn't have songs that flowed together, that were meant to be listened to in succession. For some reason that I still have yet to discover, Marvin Gaye was the only soul musician to experiment with the developing artistic ideas the sixties are known for, and he only did it a single time. That was on this album. "What's Going On".
You can't separate any song from this album and still achieve the same effect. The first reason for this is obvious. The two sides have suite arrangements. Every song runs directly into the next. Except for the slight pause at the end of What's Going On (probably added because the song was released as a single), there's no breaks between the tracks. From "What's Happening Brother" to "Mercy Mercy Me" there are no stops. It basically is one long song. The same technique is used on side two, where multiple songs run together to form an inseparable string of music. This is the only soul album that borrows this favorite technique of Paul McCartney. Second, there's also a running theme in the music. The songs deal with the self destruction of mankind from War and pollution, and are responded to with cries to save the world for God and for our future generations. The album carries a message, it deals with real problems man constantly faces. It deals with universal truths, the self eradicating nature of the human species. This is not a collection of soul songs. This is a Soul Album. The first, the last.
I still haven't been able to figure out why this is. Every other genre of music was experimenting with these concepts throughout the sixties. Why did it take Soul music until 1971 to catch up? And why was the experiment abandoned? The album was a huge success. Why were there no followers? Even Marvin Gaye himself never made such an incredible artistic statement again. It's unfortunate the experiment didn't last, but at least we did get one great soul album.