The Heart of Rock and Soul by Dave Marsh 25 WHAT'S GOING ON, Marvin Gaye Produced by Marvin Gaye; written by Al Cleveland, Marvin Gaye, and Renaldo Benson Tamla 54201 1971 Billboard: #2 "What's Going On" wasn't the same kind of breakthrough as "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" or Sly and the Family Stone's "Dance to the Music." But it did establish a new kind of adult black pop by bathing Gaye's voice in an almost weightless atmosphere of post-psychedelic rhythm and harmony. "What's Going On" is the matrix from which was created the spectrum of ambitious black pop of the seventies: everything from the blaxploitation soundtracks of Curtis Mayfield to Giorgio Moroder's pop-disco. Not bad for a record whose backing vocalists include a pair of pro football players. But neither its influence nor its role in breaking the grip of the Motown machine is what makes "What's Going On" great. It's great because it's every bit as gorgeous as it is ambitious. After making it, "I felt like I'd finally learned how to sing," Gaye told biographer David Ritz. Gaye taught himself to "relax, just relax," which resulted in a vocal that moves through a dreamscape in which facts and wishes are equally terrible. The song is most famous for attacking war and poverty but it's also an affirmation of love. And that's why, for all its references to long hair and Vietnam, "What's Going On" will never sound dated. At its best "What's Going On" amalgamates soul and Latin jazz, but at times it's so laid-back that it approaches Hollywood schmaltz. What saves it then is the unmistakable Motown underpinning that comes from James Jamerson's liquid bass and what might be castanets but could just as easily be fingers popping. All the label's session stalwarts are there and they never played better, maybe because they'd never been so stringently challenged. You don't make music like this unless you're surrounded by loved ones. Created: September 27, 2021 at 6.47 pm at http://www.lexjansen.com with FPDF 1.81 Page 1.