1/23/13: Marvin Gaye: What's Going On

A very difficult album to write about.  It's a beautiful record, with a sophisticated and urban and soulful sound  (it's like the concept of "hope" embodied by notes).  You'd be a fool to dismiss it, but I think you'd also be a little naive to call it an interesting political statement.  Marvin is obviously an interesting guy, and you hear in his voice a sort of nuance, a combination of pain and peace and thwarted ambition and intelligence and compassion and anger, that is simply not in the man's lyrics.  Only two songs here, the masterful singles "Inner City Blues" and the title track, have even a hint of the generation-defining poetry that we've always been told the whole album possesses.

The album's other seven tracks form a kind of super-medley.  They all sound very similar-- you know that incredibly rousing intro to "Mercy Mercy Me," with the glockenspiels and the drums and such?  Yeah, that's pretty much at the beginning of every song.  I don't have a problem with this, though.  If there had to be a Motown album where the musicians deserved back-of-the-cover credit, it'd be this one: there is no other record that sounds like it.  It's a coming out party for the experimental and artsy tendencies of Motown's insanely gifted group of players.  Hence, the middle sevens songs all sound jammy and cool and pretty formless, with nary a tune in sight.

A song works on What's Going On when it successfully combines that sound with enough of a tune to allow Marvin to explore his character, i.e. his voice.  "Songs" like "Save the Children," which is basically a (crappy) poem, are sort of flat and corny.  "Right On" seems like a dream at first-- seven minutes of this sound?  WOW-- until you realize that the jam isn't really going to go anywhere, and that Marvin himself doesn't really plan on adding much to it.

ALL THAT BEING SAID, if I have to tell you how great "What's Going On," "Inner City Blues," "Mercy Mercy Me," or even "Flying High in the Friendly Sky" are, then either...

1. You do not possess What's Going On, and you should.

or

2. You do possess What's Going On, and you are an irredeemable idiot.