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Binding: Audio CDEAN: 0044006402222 Format: Extra tracks, Original recording remastered Label: Motown Manufacturer: Motown MPN: 064022 Number Of Discs: 1 Publisher: Motown Release Date: January 14, 2003 Studio: Motown Editorial Review: Amazon.com essential recording: Sly & The Family Stone might have psychedelicized soul music, but Marvin Gaye personalized it. Although the powers-that-were Motown didn't even want to release the record, the unexpected success of What's Going On, issued in 1971, inspired Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, and just about every other black artist on the planet to take greater responsibility for their music and its meaning. Gaye co-wrote the songs and produced the album, flavoring it with layer upon layer of his own multi-tracked vocals, oceans of hand percussion, strings, flutes, and jazzy horn solos. Spacey and loose as a spliff-fueled Sunday afternoon jam in the park, the nine songs all played like a hit single. The title track--inspired by his brother's return from the Vietnam War--and the obvious social commentary of "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)" and "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" actually were hit singles. Two other tracks ("Wholly Holy" and "Save the Children") would inspire hit covers by Aretha Franklin and Diana Ross, respectively. Nevertheless, What's Going On sounds as fresh today as it did the week that it came out. Recommended reading: Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye by David Ritz (McGraw-Hill, 1985). --Don Waller Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Marvin GayeI'm a big fan but this cd did not have the songs I like best Rating:  - Songs of life and deathWow. When it comes to an album like What's Going On, it's easy to become jaded. Critics have been praising this thing since the day of its conception, have been hailing it as a masterpiece since before you even knew how to read, have apparently been putting it on a pedestal since before Marvin Gaye was born. It gets old after a while. It's the kind of album that becomes cliché before you even hear it, that's the kind of thing you can have a conversation about even if you don't own a copy. It's ... Read More Rating: - God IS Love...Along with 'Kind of Blue' and 'Songs In The Key of Life', this cd, album, whatever...is the absolute embodiment of what music is about. Marvin was touched by the all-encompassing spirit that moves through and around all of us. 'What's Going On' speaks to a place in us that can only be described as seminal, pure, suigeneris...priceless. Rating: - Should be part of American History, and one of the greatest albums of all-time1.) This should be taught in schools. 2.) One of the most cohesive albums I've ever heard. A true, true, true classic. Rating: - WHAT'S GOING ON....IS (STILL) WHAT'S GOING ON ! Is Marvin Gaye's masterpiece, What's Going On, outdated? Listen... War, crime, poverty, drugs, inflation, taxation, ecological disasters. These are some of the social and political issues that Marvin Gaye addresses on his brilliant 1971 album, What's Going On. And in 2008? Take a look around. These same issues are (still) What's Going On. This album couldn't be any more direct in identifying the world's most urgent problems, or in ... Read More |
