For my essay I’m going to write an in depth analysis of Marvin Gaye 1971 album ‘What’s Going On”. I feel this is a good choice there’s a lot of social and political influences for the album, which has a strong concept and aesthetic. 

I’m planning to research how the effects of the Vietnam way inspired his writing and composition, as well as the social climate of the U.S during the 60s and 70s. I think this album was an important turning point for politics in music, with Motown records only releasing dance tracks and love ballads before Marvin Gaye released ‘What’s Going On’. I’m also going to focus on how the actual structure of the album is an important tool which Gaye used to bring attention to his message of peace and equality. He took the concept album format and turned into a political device, creating an album sounds like one continuous song, representing his train of thought and almost forcing the listener to pay attention to what he was trying to teach us. 

The aesthetic of the album is ingenious, he uses juxtaposition between the tone of the album and the content of his lyrics, which I believe was a successful effort to widen the audience of the album. On first listen, most of the tracks seem fun and euphoric(sounds of a party are heard throughout the album and he uses colloquial language to create a comfortable energy in his tracks) but the actual words he’s singing are meaningful and dark:

Mother, mother

There’s too many of you crying

Brother, brother, brother

There’s far too many of you dying

the album. He mentions The Father multiple timed throughout the album and has a few tracks with clear links to christianity in their titles (God is Love, Mercy Mercy Me). I’m interested to look further into the way Gaye’s relationship with his faith and how that impacted the aesthetics of the album and some of the compositional decisions he made. 

I’ve always called this album “the best album from start to finish” and I still feel strongly about that. His use of composition and structure to tell his story is unlike anything else, I admire the way he used his platform to spread a message of peace in a time where it was deemed dangerous to be black and political.