Marvin Gaye
What's going on
Marvin Gaye's eleventh studio album, "What's Going On", was released on May 21, 1971, by Tamla, a subsidiary of Motown Records. Marvin Gaye produced the album and credited the session musicians known as the Funk Brothers, Motown's in-house studio band.
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Marvin Gaye's eleventh studio album, "What's Going On", was released on May 21, 1971, by Tamla, a subsidiary of Motown Records. Marvin Gaye produced the album and credited the session musicians known as the Funk Brothers, Motown's in-house studio band.
The album features a series of songs that segue into each other and is a concept album. It tells the story of a Vietnam veteran returning home to witness suffering, injustice, and hatred. Marvin Gaye's introspective lyrics cover topics such as drug abuse, poverty, and the Vietnam War, as well as promoting awareness of ecological issues.
"What's Going On" was a commercial and critical success, spending over a year on the Billboard Top LPs and becoming Marvin Gaye's second number-one album on the Billboard's Soul LPs chart. The title track, released in January 1971, hit number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and was followed by two other top-ten hits, "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" and "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)". The album is widely regarded as a classic of 1970s soul and has been ranked as one of the greatest albums of all time by music historians, critics, and the general public.