Marvin Gaye, (April 2, 1939 – April 1, 1984) was an American singer-songwriter and musician crowned as "The Prince of Motown" and "The Prince of Soul".
His mid-1970s work, including the albums What's Going On, Let's Get It On and I Want You, helped influencing the quiet storm, urban adult contemporary and slow jam genres. After a self-imposed European exile in the early eighties, Gaye returned on the 1982 Grammy-Award winning hit, "Sexual Healing" and the Midnight Love album before his death. Gaye was shot dead by his father on April 1, 1984. In 2008, the American music magazine Rolling Stone ranked Gaye at number 6 on its list of The Greatest Singers of All Time, and ranked at number 18 on 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
What's Going On is his eleventh record and a unified concept album consisting of nine songs, most of which lead into the next. It has also been categorized as a song cycle, since the album ends on a reprise to the album's opening theme. The album is told from the point of view of a Vietnam War veteran returning to the country he had been fighting for, and seeing nothing but injustice, suffering and hatred.
In worldwide critics/artists and public surveys, it has been voted as one of the landmark recordings in pop music history and is considered to be one of the greatest albums ever made. In 2003, the album was ranked number 6 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
What's Going On is a song written by Renaldo "Obie" Benson, Al Cleveland, and Marvin Gaye. It became a crossover hit single that reached #2 on the pop charts and #1 on the R&B charts. A meditation on the troubles and problems of the world, the song proved a timely and relatable release, and in 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked it the fourth greatest song of all time.
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