Marvin Gaye
Berry Gordy heard "What's Going On" and called it "the worst thing I've ever heard." He refused to release it. Marvin Gaye delivered an ultimatum: release the song or he would never record for Motown again. Gordy relented. The single sold 100,000 copies on its first day of release. The album it launched was the first Motown release to include printed lyrics and to credit all 39 studio musicians by name. It was also the first album Gaye had produced himself. The accidental double vocal that defines the track happened because an engineer mistakenly played two lead vocal tracks simultaneously on a mono machine.
In our deep dive into What's Going On, we trace the song from Gordy's rejection to the ultimatum that changed Motown's history, and what it reveals about an artist who fought his own label for the right to make something that mattered.
