Talk:What's Going On (album)/Archive 1

Length of God is Love
This should be pretty easily verifiable, but I can't find any evidence that "God is Love" is 1:49 in length. All I can find is lots of 1:41 clips that sound incomplete and a 1:46 Detroit mix. Does anyone have the original vinyl album who can settle this? I'm changing it unless someone knows otherwise. Also, if anyone has a 1:49 length clip, I would love to get it...thanks! Jairuscobb (talk) 05:18, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * You're going to love this. From the original album:

The times in the article, as I write, are from the CD reissue of the vinyl (I do not know the date, but I am looking at a copy of it), not the vinyl, and not the bogus Deluxe Version CD that does not have the original vinyl mix. Since all the tracks segue, it's somewhat a matter of opinion how long they are. That should answer all your questions! [Special:Contributions/24.27.31.170|24.27.31.170]] (talk) 16:04, 29 April 2011 (UTC) Eric

Inconsistency this article and Marvin Gaye
"...football with the Detroit Lions, but failed his tryouts." In the Marvin Gaye article it says he never even got to try out, which is it?

Clevland or Cleveland?
Is the fellow composers name "Al Clevland" or "Al Cleveland"? Both are cited at different places (even Wikipedia has both names listed with the same info). Which is is correct?

It's Al Clevland. I think that's the right spelling. It's listed like that on the album too when you check the credits.
 * The Wikipedia photo of the 45rpm single (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/42/Whatsgoingonsingle.jpg) shows his named spelled "Cleveland". If you Google "Clevland Gaye", the only references found appear to be copies of Wikipedia articles.  I'm changing all references to "Cleveland".  Vandelay 01:49, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Chicago Tribune review
Transcription using Google News Advanced News Archive Search. Chicago Tribune (Kot, Greg. 4. July 22, 1994) review of Marvin Gaye reissues:

"Chicago's R. Kelly was working the crowd at the UIC Pavilion a few weeks ago like a Chippendales dancer. But when he needed something a little less anxious to set the mood, Kelly reached back for a snippet from Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On," and the crowd roared. The hottest new voice in rhythm and blues had unwittingly allowed himself to be topped by a 21-year-old record.

"Love Starved Heart" ((STAR)(STAR)(STAR)) is no substitute for the string o' hits from that era, but the 16 newly unearthed songs are fascinating for what they reveal about Motown in the '60s: Even many of the label's "rejects" were finished gems. Most of the tunes adhere to formula, but what a formula it was: a thumping bass-driven groove accented by piano, tambourine and rhythm guitar, over which a singer would passionately address his or her romantic travails.

On a label laden with talent-Smokey Robinson, the Temptations, the Supremes, Stevie Wonder-Gaye was the first to break from the hit-factory assembly line. With "What's Going On" ((STAR)(STAR)(STAR)(STAR)), he created soul music's first "art" album, an inner-city response to the Celtic mysticism of Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks," the psychedelic pop of the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," the rewired blues of Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited." Using many of the same musicians who forged the Motown sound of the '60s, Gaye relaxed the tempo and found a feeling somewhere between soul and jazz, the songs seamlessly flowing into one another, riding the pulse of James Jamerson's remarkable bass. Jamerson is Gaye's shadow, and the singer's voice sounds pliant, unhurried, almost conversational, yet no less urgent.

Gaye creates the illusion of an internal conversation by layering multiple vocal lines, and though the sociopolitical lyrics at times become banal ("War is hell, when will it end, when will people start getting together again"), the music and the performances never are. On "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)," Gaye anticipates the unforgiving world of Ice-T and NWA: "Crime is increasing/Trigger happy policing/Panic is spreading/God knows where we're heading." What separates Gaye from the gangsta rappers is context; his social protest was part of a broad spectrum of emotions, messages, music. On "Save the Children," he sings: "Who's willing to try/Yea, to save a world . . . save a world that is destined to die." Poised on a precipice between doubt and optimism, hope and futility, the lyric is masterfully ambivalent, as would be most of Gaye's subsequent music.

The early '70s were also the height of the blaxploitation film era, and though "Trouble Man" ((STAR)(STAR)) isn't quite the landmark soundtrack that "Shaft" and "Superfly" were, its title track remains a magnificent mood piece.

With "Let's Get It On" ((STAR)(STAR)(STAR)(STAR)), Gaye made a dramatic shift toward the carnal, and while the album is replete with erotic imagery, both implied and explicit, it is also as much preoccupied with distance and unfulfilled need. On the closing "Just to Keep You Satisfied," the singer alludes to his troubled marriage to Gordy's sister, Anna; with hindsight it can be seen as a prelude to his famed "divorce" album of five years later, "Here My Dear." Throughout, Gaye uses the multi-tracked vocals perfected on "What's Going On," this time to convey his most intimate desires, and the music is again supple, sinuous, understated yet funky as the dickens.

In contrast, "I Want You" ((STAR)(STAR)) sounds ludicrously overdone. It plays like a sequel to "Let's Get It On," only this time Gaye is fixated on his new love, Janis Hunter. The heavy breathing and moaning of a couple making love detracts from Gaye's singing, and the material, little of it written by the singer, is generic with the exception of "Come Live With Me Angel," which suggests a plush, post-coital haze.

"Here My Dear" ((STAR)(STAR)(STAR) 1/2) is in many ways the centerpiece of the Motown reissues, because it had never been released on CD and was widely misunderstood upon its release. It is a difficult work to grasp-a 78-minute album that all but abandons pop formula to turn on a spigot of open-ended musings and recriminations. It was created in an atmosphere of spite and regret, part of Gaye's divorce settlement with Anna, who was to receive the $305000 advance for for the album plus its first $295000 in earnings. At first, Gaye's heart wasn't in the project, but he told biographer David Ritz that "the more I lived with the notion of doing an album for Anna, the more it fascinated me. Besides, I owed the public my best effort. Finally, I did the record out of deep passion. It became a compulsion. I had to free myself of Anna, and I saw this as the way." His tone alternately mocking and self-pitying, angry and humorous, righteous and lowdown, Gaye skirts self-indulgence with music so personal and honest that it couldn't be contained by verse-chorus convention. "If you ever loved me with all your heart/You'd never take a million dollars dollars to part," he sings, yet even Anna would later say that she had come to appreciate the album, a magnificent obsession imperfectly realized.

Nearly as controversial was "In Our Lifetime" ((STAR)(STAR)(STAR)), an album that Motown released against Gaye's wishes and prompted his departure from the label. Although unfinished by the singer's finicky standards, the disc is in many ways the best representaton of the conflicting impulses that ruled Gaye's latter years, beginning with the cover art, which depicts the singer as both devil and saint. The music is equally schizophrenic, post-disco funk and party tracks that address nuclear war, runaway egos and Jesus Christ. It isn't Gaye's best work, but perhaps the most apt epitaph for his career: tangled, thorny, searching, never satisfied, strangely beautiful, deceptively becalmed. It's a legacy so rich and varied, no R&B singer has been able to approach it since."

- Greg Kot

Dan56 (talk) 22:11, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Singer given key to the city in 2001?
How was this done when he was killed in 1984.... Shouldn't this read that it was given posthumously. Is there any reference for this ? -- David Spalding ( ☎   ✉   ✍  ) 21:23, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
 * No he was given a key in May 1972 in DC during "Marvin Gaye Day". BrothaTimothy (talk · contribs) 03:21, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
 * 2001 is the date of its release... Regards.--Kürbis (✔) 11:14, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Also good work on this article, Timothy. Regards.--Kürbis (✔) 11:24, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks. BrothaTimothy (talk · contribs) 00:12, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 02:12, 22 May 2016 (UTC)