What’s Going On (1) is the eleventh studio album by American singer, songwriter, and producer Marvin Gaye. It was released in May 1971, by the Motown Records subsidiary label Tamla. Recorded between 1970 and 1971 in sessions at Hitsville USA, Golden World, and United Sound Studios in Detroit, and at The Sound Factory in West Hollywood, California, it was Gaye’s first album to credit him as a producer and to credit Motown’s in-house studio band, the session musicians known as the Funk Brothers.
By the end of the 1960s, Marvin Gaye had fallen into a deep depression following the brain tumor diagnosis of his Motown singing partner Tammi Terrell, the failure of his marriage to Anna Gordy, a growing dependency on cocaine, troubles with the IRS, and struggles with Motown Records, the label he had signed with in 1961. One night, while holed up at a Detroit apartment, Gaye attempted suicide with a handgun, only to be saved from committing the act by Berry Gordy’s father. Gaye started to experience more international success around this time as both a solo artist with hits such as “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” and “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby” and as a dual artist with Tammi Terrell, but Gaye said during this time that he felt he “didn’t deserve” his success.
While traveling on his tour bus with the Four Tops in May 1969, Four Tops member Renaldo Benson witnessed an act of police brutality and violence committed on anti war protesters who had been protesting at Berkeley’s People’s Park in what was later termed as “Bloody Thursday” Benson wrote ”What’s Going On” about the event and offered it to Gaye, who tweaked and enriched it. Gaye had also been deeply affected by the social ills plaguing the United States at the time. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Marvin Gaye discussed what had shaped his view on more socially conscious themes in music and the conception of his eleventh studio album: In 1969 or 1970, I began to re-evaluate my whole concept of what I wanted my music to say … I was very much affected by letters my brother was sending me from Vietnam, as well as the social situation here at home. I realized that I had to put my own fantasies behind me if I wanted to write songs that would reach the souls of people. I wanted them to take a look at what was happening in the world.
What’s Going On is a concept album with most of its songs segueing into the next and has been categorized as a song cycle. The narrative established by the songs is told from the point of view of a Vietnam veteran returning to his home country to witness hatred, suffering, and injustice. Gaye’s introspective lyrics explore themes of drug abuse, poverty, and the Vietnam War. He has also been credited with promoting awareness of ecological issues before the public outcry over them had become prominent (Mercy, Mercy Me).
What’s Going On stayed on the Billboard for over a year and became Gaye’s second number-one album on Billboard’s Soul LP’s chart, where it stayed for nine weeks. The title track, which had been released in January 1971 as the album’s lead single, hit number two on the Billboard and held the top position on Billboard’s Soul Singles chart five weeks running. The follow-up singles “Mercy Mercy Me” and “Inner City Blues” also reached the top 10 of the Hot 100, making Gaye the first male solo artist to place three top ten singles on the Hot 100 from one album.
The album was an immediate commercial and critical success, and came to be viewed by music historians as a classic of 1970s soul. Broad-ranging surveys of critics, musicians, and the general public have shown that What’s Going On is regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time and a landmark recording in popular music. In 1985, writers on British music weekly the NME voted it best album of all time. In 2020, it was ranked number one on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
