100 Greatest Songs of the 70’s #33 Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On

Released : 1971

Speaking five years after What’s Going On had helped to cement him as one of the most influential artists of all time, Marvin Gaye’s plea for understanding sounded as reasonable as it was unlikely to be honoured. “There are a lot of things I desire. I desire peace and happiness and love and understanding. That sounds so ridiculous to a lot of people. ‘Who is this guy wanting all that? Another trouble maker.’

The singer who’d been one of the first signed to Berry Gordy’s Motown label and then produced a mountain of hits – including the classic’s classic, Heard It Through The Grapevine – had withdrawn from the label’s machinations following the death of his wife Tami Terrell in 1970. When he returned with his next album What’s Going On, Gordy was supposedly unwilling to release it, but Gaye won the argument and it paid back handsomely in the shape of hugely popular singles Mercy Mercy Me, Inner City Blues and What’s Going On.

It was a record which later Smokey Robinson would hail as the greatest of all time – and in the context of soul he certainly had a case. It’s title track underlined the movement’s capacity to advocate without hectoring, Gaye’s voice pure silk, the breezy arrangement upfront without being over embellished. A man who gave peace such an eloquent manifesto, Gaye would later meet a violent end in 1984 when he was murdered by his father. It seemed that love, happiness and understanding were unreasonable things to ask for after all.