Marvin Gaye’s 1971 album “What’s Going On” is not a set of singles. It is one long question asked nine different ways: what is happening to the world, and can music make anyone care. Gaye built it as a single connected work, each track leading into the next, mixing soul and jazz into something that sounds gentle and hits hard.
Nine Tracks Open the Record
The title track, “What’s Going On,” opens the album with layered voices and a rising instrumental line that sounds like a conversation already in progress. It sets the terms immediately: warm, sad, and direct. “What’s Happening Brother” follows, narrower in focus, a returning soldier asking plain questions about jobs and home. “Flyin’ High (in the Friendly Sky)” turns the focus to one man’s troubles, its rhythm built around a subject Gaye does not ease off of.
“Save the Children” is the album’s first big rise in scale, four minutes that grow from one man’s troubles to concerns shared by young people everywhere. It is followed by “God Is Love,” barely two minutes long, a short, religious pause that acts as a bridge between the record’s two parts.
Mercy Mercy Me and the Middle Songs
“Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” is the album’s clearest example of a protest song that never raises its voice. Gaye sings about waste and dying oceans over a melody so smooth it could pass for a love song, and that contrast is the point. It remains one of the three tracks on this album that critics single out most, alongside the title track and the closer.
“Right On,” at 7:15, is the longest track here, and it earns the length. It gives the jazz influences the most room of any track on the record, letting the band play freely inside Gaye’s larger design. “Wholy Holy” follows, a quieter, gentle, solemn piece that draws the record back toward its spiritual center before the final turn.
Inner City Blues Closes It Out
“Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)” ends the album on its hardest note. Gaye’s voice cracks with real anger over poverty and misery, and the arrangement matches him, tight where earlier tracks were smooth. It is the third track singled out by critics, and it closes the record without offering comfort.
Three tracks carry the weight of the whole statement:
- “What’s Going On” — the argument, stated once and never repeated the same way twice.
- “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” — protest carried inside a gentle melody.
- “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)” — the record’s hardest edge, saved for last.
What Makes It Last
Nine tracks, 35 minutes, and not one wasted note. Rolling Stone called it Gaye’s masterpiece, “the most perfect expression of an artist’s hope, anger, and concern ever recorded,” and that claim holds up. One review called it “the most important and passionate record to come out of soul music, delivered by one of its finest voices.” Another review framed it as a chance to catch a major artist at his peak. All three judgments are right, and none of them go too far.
What makes the album endure is order as much as subject. Consider how these ideas arrive:
- A question asked out loud.
- Personal stories that answer it in pieces.
- A spiritual pause at the center.
- A larger protest against the state of the world.
- A final, unanswered cry.
That order is why the record still plays as a whole piece decades later, and why the album’s 2011 version met the same warm welcome as the original.
Verdict
“What’s Going On” does not date. Every track still points at something real, and Gaye never once reaches for an easy answer. This is a masterpiece with no filler and no weak side.
- What’s Going On4:00
- What’s Happening Brother2:57
- Flyin’ High (in the Friendly Sky)3:40
- Save the Children4:06
- God Is Love1:44
- Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)3:03
- Right On7:15
- Wholy Holy3:06
- Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)5:30
