What's Going On

The music and the image that Marvin Gaye had before the recording of the album What's Going On, was mostly about love, and with that he had a lot of early success playing and singing with different groups and artists.  Now a lot of things that have been going on that influenced and inspired this album.  Tammie Terrell, his singing partner which he did many duets with, did from cancer.  Marvin Gaye later did not perform because of his fear of dying he suffered stage fright.  When he later returned to the studio, after a failed attempt at the NFL, he wrote songs about problems in the world, like telling the story of a Vietnam war veteran coming back home just to see more suffering and hate.  Another one of the topics were about the police brutality going on in San Francisco.  He had to face many obstacles to release the album.  At the time he was recording this album, Marvin Gaye was depressed, depressed about his singing partner, about not getting in the NFL, and about all of the things going on in the world at that time.  When he finished the album, it was shelved because the content was very different from the smooth love songs that he always did.  When it was released, it was a hit.  The way this album was set apart from the other soul recordings out were that this was the only one that did not have to do with problems going on in the world, and that was real gutsy of him to do so because the album could have been a hit or miss because it was so different in content from other soul artist.  The impression this gave me as a listener is that no matter what you do and how you are used to doing it, there will always be something out there that can make such a dramatic impact on you that you change what you do for just a moment just like this album.