“What’s Going On” is a song by American singer-songwriter Marvin Gaye, released in 1971 on the Motown subsidiary Tamla. The song was composed by Renaldo “Obie” Benson, Al Cleveland, and Gaye and produced by Gaye himself. The song marked Gaye’s departure from the Motown Sound towards more personal material. Later topping the Hot Soul Singles chart for five weeks and crossing over to number two on the Billboard, it would sell over two million copies, becoming Gaye’s second-most successful Motown song to date. It was ranked at Number 6 in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2021.
The song’s inspiration came from Renaldo “Obie” Benson, a member of the Motown vocal group the Four Tops, after he and the group’s tour bus arrived at Berkeley in May 1969. While there, Benson witnessed police brutality and violence in the city’s People’s Park during a protest held by anti-war activists in what was hailed later as “Bloody Thursday”. Upset by the situation, Benson said to author Ben Edmonds that as he saw this, he asked, “‘What is happening here?’ One question led to another. Why are they sending kids so far away from their families overseas? Why are they attacking their own children in the streets?”
Gaye, himself, had been inspired by social ills committed in the United States, citing the 1965 Watts Riot as a turning point in his life in which he asked himself, “‘With the world exploding around me, how am I supposed to keep singing love songs?'” Gaye was also influenced by emotional conversations shared between him and his brother Frankie, who had returned from three years of service at the Vietnam War and his namesake cousin’s death while serving troops. During phone conversations with Berry Gordy, Gaye had told him that he wanted to record a protest record, to which Gordy said in response, “Marvin, don’t be ridiculous. That’s taking things too far.”
Gaye entered the recording studio, Hitsville USA, in June 1970, to record “What’s Going On”. Instead of relying on other producers to help him with the song, Gaye, inspired by recent successes of his productions for the vocal act, the Originals, decided to produce the song himself, mixing up original Motown in-house studio musicians such as James Jamerson and Eddie Brown with musicians he recruited himself. The opening sopano saxophone line, provided by musician Eli Fontaine, was not originally intended. Once Gaye heard Fontaine’s riff, he told Fontaine to go home. When Fontaine protested that he was just “goofing around”, Gaye replied “you goof off exquisitely, thank you.”
The song was reviewed by Slant magazine as a song that presented a contradictory sound, with the song’s mournful tone going in contrast to the party atmosphere of the vocal chatter. In reviewing the What’s Going On album, Rolling Stone critic Vince Aletti stated that while the song’s lyrics were “hardly brilliant”, the song itself helped to set the mood for the rest of the album, and that “without overreaching they capture a certain aching dissatisfaction that is part of the album’s mood.” “What’s Going On” was nominated for two Grammy Awards in 1972 including but failed to win in any of the categories.
