Marvin Gaye's What's Going On

Before the release of What's Going On, Marvin Gaye was a sex symbol and a Motown icon. Everyone saw him as a clean cut, fashionable guy who sang songs about love. He fit the perfect description of a Motown star. He was exactly what you would expect to come out of Motown. Nobody ever expected him to drop the image completely and start writing about things that were more serious in their lyrical content.

There were lots of social and political issues going on at the time when 'What's Going On' was conceived that fueled Gaye to change his direction and use the power of his music and celebrity status to express his emotions towards the war and the ever changing politics of the United States. The war had a huge impact on Gaye and he felt compelled to write songs about how it all needed to stop. It became quite clear that he no longer cared about making songs to sell records and re-write the same love songs that he had written before. His new outlook on songwriting wouldn't come without a cost, however.

The strict people over at Motown didn't like the new direction, claiming that nobody wanted to hear a song about war and that it wasn't a love song. Gaye fired back by saying that it was in fact all about love and how the war needed to stop and people needed to come together. While skeptical, Motown ended up funding the record so that it could become a reality. When the record was done and ready for release, it was rejected by Motown's quality control and Berry Gordy claimed it was the worst thing he'd ever heard. Motown refused to release 'What's Going On' until Gaye left them with an ultimatum: "Release the record or I'll never record for Motown again." Motown had no choice but to release the record. Fortunately, the record sold 100,000 copies within the first day, quickly changing Motown's mind about the record.

What's Going On was really quite different from other soul recordings of its time. The lyrical content expanded beyond the topic of love and looked at it on a greater scale. The instrumentation was rich in content and the arrangements were complex. The studio musicians claimed it was definitely a different type of playing than they were used to in contract to their work on other Motown records. As jazz musicians who felt that Motown arrangements were easy and sometimes dull, they were actually impressed with the arrangements that "What's Going On" had to offer.

As a listener, "What's Going On" has a classic sound that I've heard all my life growing up. The complex string arrangements and overall grooves throughout the album have always interested me the most and always stand out to me when I'm listening to the album. As a recording engineer, the production is superb. It's never easy to mix a song with so many things going on at once. Again, I'm most impressed with how well the strings were mixed throughout the album.