May 21st 1971 Marvin Gaye released his 11th studio album. The record was made at in the Motown studios in Detroit. Berry Gordy, the man behind Motown, didn't approve of this record containing counter culture messages. He thought this was too politically charged, and while he gave in to Gaye's record, he was certain it would flop. Whats going on shot to number one where it stayed on top of the charts for 5 weeks. If you have not listened to all of it, you are missing out on some of the most beautiful, moving songs ever made. I was listening to this record this morning and even to this day it moves me to tears when I hear "God is love".As I was listening to the rest of the songs I couldn't help but think "are things as bad or worse today as they were in in the early 70's when Gaye sang "whats going on?" His songs were done from the view of a soldier returning from Vietnam. Would a soldier returning from Afghanistan today not mention all of the things the Gaye sings about in his record. Ecology, War, Pollution, Unemployment, Poverty, Drugs. The record could have been released May 21, 2010, yet if I tune in to MTV or surf the radio for pop songs of today, there is not a hint, nor whisper of whats going on. Songs today are way out in fantasy land. I caught a disturbing video of two of the biggest pop stars today, Lady Gaga and Beyonce, where Beyonce springs Gaga out of prison, they go to a diner and poison everyone (I'm not making this up) and dance around them in red white and blue outfits as they die. Whats going on? Why is it no one is singing about Haiti? Why are we not singing about ending THIS war? Has there been one War song in the last 10 years we have been at it? Its truly mindblowing. Thousands of People are losing their homes every day to foreclosure, and unemployment has not been this high since the 30's, yet no is singing about it. It used to be the silver lining in the cloud about bad times was, the music got better, as it did in the late 60s and early 70's. Instead, in this "the worst of times" we have Beyonce singing about "All the single ladies". Its actually quite fascinating to me we could have so much trouble in this world and pop culture today seems to have put a blind eye to it. Maybe in this day in age people do not want to be reminded of their problems... instead they want to escape them. I believe there is a song racing up the charts now call "Billionaire by Travie McCoy" about a guy who dreams of being a billionaire". We do have pockets of passionate people trying to bring awareness to some of the problems in the World. (Sean Penn's all out effort to help those in Haiti comes to mind), but by in large there is little or no outrage over much of anything today. Too busy listening to Travie McCoy I guess.
What's going on?
