Whats Going On

Benson later said Gaye tweaked and enriched the song, "added some things that were more ghetto, more natural, which made it seem like a story than a song When Gaye initially thought the song's moody feel would be appropriate to be recorded by The Originals , Benson convinced Gaye to record it as his own song.

• What's Going On (Marvin Gaye song).
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Gaye, himself, had been inspired by social ills committed in the United States, citing the Watts riots as a turning point in his life in which he asked himself, "'With the world exploding around me, how am I supposed to keep singing love songs? That's taking things too far. Instead of relying on other producers to help him with the song, Gaye, inspired by recent successes of his productions for the vocal act, The Originals , decided to produce the song himself, mixing up original Motown in-house studio musicians such as James Jamerson and Eddie Brown with musicians he recruited himself.

Once Gaye heard Fontaine's riff, he told Fontaine to go home.

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When Fontaine protested that he was just "goofing around", Gaye replied "you goof off exquisitely, thank you. Jamerson was pulled into the session after Gaye located him playing with a band at a local bar. He could really put that stuff away, and then sit down and still be able to play. His tolerance was incredible. It took a hell a lot to get him smashed. He loved it because I had written Jamerson licks for Jamerson. To add more to the song's laid-back approach, Gaye invited the Detroit Lions players Mel Farr and Lem Barney to the studio and, along with Gaye and the Funk Brothers, added in vocal chatter, engaging in a mock conversation.

Musician and songwriter Elgie Stover , who later served as a caterer for Bill Clinton and was then a Motown staffer and confidante of Gaye's, was the man who opened the song's track with the words, "hey, man, what's happening? The rhythm tracks and the song's overdubs were done at Hitsville, while strings, horns, lead and background vocals were recorded at Golden World Studios.

On hearing a playback of the song, Gaye asked his engineer Kenneth Sands to give him his two vocal leads to compare what he wanted to use for the song's release.

All Star Tribute - What's Going On [1080pHD]

Sands ended up mixing the leads together, by accident. However, when he heard it, Gaye was so impressed with the double-lead feel that he kept it, influencing his later recordings where he mastered vocal multi-layering adding in three different vocal parts. Before presenting the song to Gordy, he produced a false fade to the song, bringing the song back for a few seconds after it was initially to have ended.

The song was also notable for its use of major seventh and minor seventh chords, which was a fairly uncommon use at the time. When Gordy heard the song after Gaye presented the song to him in California, he turned down Gaye's request to release it, telling Gaye he felt it was "the worst thing I ever heard in my life". Anxious for Marvin Gaye product, Balk got Motown's sales vice president Barney Ales to release the song, releasing it on January 17, , sending , copies of the song to radio stations across the country.

The initial success of this led to a further , to reach demand, selling over , copies within a week. The song eventually sold more than two million copies, becoming then the fastest-selling Motown single at the time. The song's success forced Gordy to allow Gaye to produce his own music, giving him an ultimatum to complete an album by the end of March, later resulting in the What's Going On album itself. The song was reviewed by Slant magazine as a song that presented a contradictory sound, with the song's mournful tone going in contrast to the party atmosphere of the vocal chatter.

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In , it was voted 2 in "Detroit's Greatest Songs", [29] a project based on voting by music experts and the public, conducted by the Detroit Free Press. In March , it was released as the third single from the album. On the album version, the song starts off with a series of gunshots in reference to the Vietnam War while the single release is a remix with an alternate vocal used in the intro. It is the single version that most often appears on Lauper compilations. There are very few performers who could carry a project like this off.

I've always admired Marvin Gaye, but I didn't expect that he would be one of them. Guess I seriously underestimated him. It won't happen again. Writing in Rock Albums of the Seventies , he deemed it both a "groundbreaking personal statement" and a Berry Gordy product, baited by three highly original singles but marred elsewhere by indistinct music and indulgent use of David Van De Pitte's strings, which Christgau called "the lowest kind of movie-background dreck".

According to Paul Gambaccini , Gaye's death in prompted a critical re-evaluation of the album, and most reviewers have since regarded it as an important masterpiece of popular music. In , writers on British music weekly the NME voted it best album of all time.

What's Going On

In , it was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. Released on May 21, , What's Going On became Gaye's first album to reach the Billboard Top LPs top ten, peaking at number six, and staying on the chart for nearly a year, selling over two million copies, by the end of , becoming Motown's and Gaye's best-selling album to that date until he released Let's Get It On in It also became Gaye's second number-one album on Billboard ' s Soul LPs chart, where it stayed for several weeks.

The album's leading single, " What's Going On ", sold over , copies within a week of its release in January , later going on to sell two-and-a-half-million units by the end of the year. The album had a modest commercial reception in countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom; "Save the Children" reached number 41 on the latter country's singles chart, while the album reached number 56 twenty-five years after its original release.

In , the album re-entered the Billboard following Gaye's untimely death. In , the album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America in the United States for sales of half a million copies after it was issued on CD. On July 22, , the album was certified platinum by the British Phonographic Industry for shipments of , albums. Also included was a recording of Gaye's first live concert performance after two years away from the stage following Tammi Terrell's illness and death, performed at The Kennedy Center Concert Hall in his native Washington, D.

What's Going On was reissued and remastered in a deluxe edition with 28 additional tracks. At Metacritic , which assigns a normalized rating out of to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of , based on ten reviews, which indicates "universal acclaim". From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other albums by this title, see What's Going On disambiguation. September " Save the Children " Released: The opening 30 seconds of the album feature layered vocals, horns, and polyrhythm—all unusual for the Motown sound.

More by Marvin Gaye

Gaye James Nyx Jr. Archived from the original on Retrieved September 8, What's Going On ". Rock Albums of the Seventies. Retrieved August 20, The Essential Album Guide. Archived from the original on March 27, Retrieved January 17, In Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian. The Rolling Stone Album Guide 4th ed.

What's Going On (Marvin Gaye song) - Wikipedia

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