20 Landmark Songs Of The 70s

14. Marvin Gaye €“ What€™s Going On?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDQ_EA5DJqI After dazzling the world as the soul man extraordinaire in the 60€™s with a string of hit singles, €œWhat€™s Going On€ helped pioneer the concept album and established Marvin as a writer of albums par excellence. The song follows the story of the fall out of the 60€™s, specifically the Vietnam war (the protagonist of the album is a shell-shocked war veteran) and the lack of calm in his native US on return from the war. It€™s as if he€™s looking at the wreckage of the tail-end of the 60€™s when the hippy dream seemed to literally die on its feet to be replaced by a nastier, more sinister atmosphere. Nonetheless, whilst the 70€™s was full of narcissism and self-indulgence, the movement of Marvin Gaye from singer of romantic torch songs to social activist was significant and proof of the emerging power of black artists, who were using the medium of music to scream about their abhorrence of the social injustice surrounding them. Rather than being an angry, isolated voice, Marvin Gaye was such a hugely powerful artist who insisted on complete artistic freedom that he had the power to do something about the injustice that he saw. And let€™s not forget the music itself, this doesn't belong to any one genre of music, utilising elements from jazz, soul and funk. This idea of the 70€™s as a period of deconstruction is writ large here, Marvin Gaye borrows with a magpie like stealth to make the song as good he can. He sounds like a preacher here, but not a zealous fanatic, his wonderfully calm and soothing voice making the angriest of appeals for calm sound reasoned, logical and most importantly, inspirational.