Marvin Gaye asks a question that still deserves an answer. “What’s Going On” brings war, protest, and the way we treat one another into the same conversation. The music is gentle enough to draw you in, and the question is hard enough to stay with you.
There’s a kind of patriotism in asking your country to live up to what it says it believes. Marvin makes that appeal sound like one neighbor talking to another. More than fifty years later, it still sounds like a conversation worth having.
