Marvin Gaye (1939-1984)
Filed under the name Marvin · March 17, 2026
What's Going On gets called one of the greatest albums ever made, and having actually listened to it plenty of times on long shifts, I'd agree, mostly because it doesn't pretend everything's fine the way a lot of music from any era tends to — it names real problems plainly, which I respect in music the same way I respect it in people. Making a record that socially conscious, and having it hold up as art decades later instead of just as a protest piece, means Marvin Gaye was doing two hard things at once: telling the truth and making it beautiful enough that people would actually sit with it. I don't trust much media that dresses up struggle to make it comfortable for people who never lived anything like it, but this album never struck me that way. It sounds like somebody who actually meant what he was singing, which is rarer than people think in any kind of music, and it's part of why I still put it on when I need the radio to say something true for once.