On the 40th anniversary of the release of ‘What’s Going On,’ the singer’s masterful testimonial to the healing possibilities of protest music, we celebrate a true pop landmark with a track-by-track breakdown of the album the great Smokey Robinson has called “the greatest album of all time.”
01
‘What’s Going On’
Marvin, still in mourning over the recent death of his duets partner, Tammi Terrell, who had collapsed onstage in his arms, began working with the writers on the half-baked tune, hoping to produce it for the Originals (‘Baby I’m for Real’). But the more the singer added his own ideas — the song took on a personal element based on the experiences of Marvin’s brother Frankie, a Vietnam veteran — the more Benson became convinced that Gaye should adopt the song as his own. Instincts don’t get much better.
02
‘What’s Happening Brother’
Motown founder Berry Gordy wanted no part of socially conscious material. Yet when the ‘What’s Going On’ single proved to be an instant commercial smash, Gordy quickly ordered a full album. The music that Marvin delivered irked Gordy not so much because of the topical subject matter but the flow: each track meshed with the one just ending, making radio play problematic. This song is essentially ‘What’s Going On Part 2,’ with the same swirling strings and forward motion led by the bassist James Jamerson. (Marvin called the album’s percussive rhythms its “black bottoms.”)
03
‘Flying High (In the Friendly Sky)’
With some help from his wife, Anna Gordy (Berry’s sister), on ‘Flying High’ Marvin Gaye captured the bleak aftermath of the cultural revolution, when mind-altering experimentation created a generation struggling with heroin addiction. As the album concept became clear to him, Marvin told Smokey Robinson, “Smoke, God is writing this album.” This otherworldly track captures the seemingly heavenly release of heroin use and the Godforsaken despair of addiction all at once.
04
‘Save the Children’
“Who’s willing to try/ To save a world that’s destined to die?” Again — not exactly the kind of heartwarming sentiment Berry Gordy was looking for. Yet Marvin and his fellow Motown musicians made it another exquisite plea for compassion. “There has never been a Marvin Gaye album with less sex,” wrote Ben Edmonds in the liner notes to the deluxe 2001 reissue of the album, “but few albums by anyone have contained more love.”
05
‘God Is Love’
The fifth track on side one introduced the piano theme that set the table for ‘Mercy Mercy Me,’ the album’s second single. If the Love Generation had lost its way, the good Lord could light the path: “All He asks of us is we give each other love,” Marvin sang. In his own liner notes, the singer suggested that his listeners “check out the Ten Commandments… You can’t go too far wrong if you live them, dig it.”
06
‘Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)’
The second single from the ‘What’s Going On’ album reached almost as high as the title track (which went to number two), hitting the fourth spot. The natural devastation the singer described — smog, oil spills, radiation, “fish full of mercury” — only sound more relevant today. “What about this overcrowded land?” sang the suddenly socially committed pop star. “How much more abuse from man can she stand?” The sad answer comes in the song’s wordless, ghostly coda.
07
‘Right On’
With its Latin flair and relaxed pace, the seven-minute ‘Right On’ is like ‘What’s Going On”s time-out from all the anguish. “That’s all right,” Marvin coos again and again, for those who are doing OK, for those who “simply like to socialize.” “Right on.” He’s in a forgiving mood, clearly influenced by Isaac Hayes’s luxurious orchestral arrangements — and by the late Martin Luther King’s pleas for a common sense of humanity.
08
‘Wholy Holy’
“Marvin,” as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Dr. King’s onetime wingman, told Time magazine upon the album’s release, “is as much a minister as any man in the pulpit.” ‘Wholy Holy’ is the most plainly spiritual track on ‘What’s Going On,’ later covered by two of soul music’s gospel queens, Aretha Franklin and Mavis Staples (the latter on ‘The Cosby Show’). “Holler love across the nation,” Marvin implores. Only the soulless would not be moved.
09
‘Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)’
On this gorgeous last track, the singer’s protest takes on its purest form: what a travesty that so many people live in abject poverty. Poverty is about money, but we can also suffer a poverty of vision and compassion. “God knows where we’re heading,” he wonders. The song’s segue into a reprise of the title track answers the question — right back where we started. Forty years later, pop music’s most profound song cycle still rings loud and true with social concern, and yet, amazingly, no small measure of hope.
