Prior to recording “What’s Going On?” Marvin Gaye’s music were mostly about the love and lust between a man and a woman who where interested in each other. Most of his love songs are considered romantic songs. The song’s inspiration came from one of it’s three writers who went to California. While in California he witnessed several war protestors receiving acts of brutality from California’s police officers. From then on the song was written about several civil war protests. During the time that he recorded “What’s going on?” Marvin had lost his friend Tammi Terrell to a brain tumor. This tragedy eventually caused Marvin Gaye to stop performing. After that he seriously thought about getting out of the music business and going to the movie business. One of the differences between “What’s Going on?” and other songs are the instrumentation, scats, crowd chatter, and free styled background vocals. Recordings of the 1960’s and 70’s were mostly bass driven but in this record the main focus is the lead vocals. Also Marvin Gaye hav free styled the first lead vocal, then he recorded a better lead vocal but when his engineers mixed the song they accidently mixed the two lead vocals giving the song a layering feel. Marvin Gaye heard this layering effect and liked it , he also used this in his later songs. Most of Motown’s records did not involve scatting, Berry Gordy also said “ It’s to bluesy” when he first heard the song. As a listener and a industry professional I feel that the writers, singers, and musician created a great song, a song that will stand the test of time. The music was very heart felt, the audience received the message and it had a cultural impact on society. It had all of the elements of a great song.
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