1. What’s Going On – Marvin Gaye (Tamla/Motown – 1971)
What The Beatles, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan and so many others so laboriously attempted to do with the so-called “concept album,” Marvin Gaye accomplished in wide strides of heart, focus and purpose on What’s Going On – a song cycle so thoughtful yet heartfelt, so prayerful yet angry – it is the very definition of timely and timeless.
Inspired by his own blues, the blues of America as the `60s melted into the `70s and, most specifically, stories his brother Frankie brought back from Vietnam, What’s Going On is a soulful extended meditation on what was fucked up about America then (war, the ecology, the children, the tax man) with not much changing as we listen in now. As crystal clear in lyrical intent and missive as it is richly engaging from merging musical standpoints of Jazz, Soul, Gospel, orchestra and Afro-rhythms, What’s Going On is an inner-city storefront church palmed in the hands of a prophet and held up to the sky for God to kiss and make better.
– A. Scott Galloway
March 8, 2019
