The narrative established by the songs is told from the point of view of a Vietnam veteran returning to his home country to witness hatred, suffering, and injustice.

Multiple critics, musicians, and many in the general public consider What's Going On to be one of the greatest albums of all time and a landmark recording in popular music.

By the end of the 1960s, Marvin Gaye had fallen into a deep depression following the brain tumor diagnosis of his Motown singing partner Tammi Terrell, the failure of his marriage to Anna Gordy, a growing dependency on cocaine, troubles with the IRS, and struggles with Motown Records, the label he had signed with in 1961.

One night, while holed up at a Detroit apartment, Gaye attempted suicide with a handgun, only to be stopped by Berry Gordy's father.

During this secluded period, Gaye ditched his previous clean-cut image to grow a beard, and preferred to wear sweatsuits instead of dress suits and sweaters.

[5] The singer also got back in touch with his spirituality and also attended several concerts held by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, which had been used for several Motown recordings in the 1960s.

[5][6][7] Gaye befriended three of the Lions teammates, Mel Farr, Charlie Sanders and Lem Barney, as well as then-Detroit Pistons star Dave Bing.

"[8][9] Returning to Detroit, Motown songwriter Al Cleveland wrote and composed a song based on his conversations with Benson of what he had seen in Berkeley.

[11] Gaye had also been deeply affected by the social ills plaguing the United States at the time, and covered the track "Abraham, Martin & John", in 1969, which became a UK hit for him in 1970.

Gaye cited the 1965 Watts riots as a pivotal moment in his life in which he asked himself, "with the world exploding around me, how am I supposed to keep singing love songs?

[10] Longtime Funk Brothers members Jack Ashford, James Jamerson and Eddie Brown participated in the recording.

Jamerson, who could not sit properly on his seat after arriving to the session drunk, performed his bass riffs, written for him by the album's arranger David Van De Pitte, on the floor.

[10] Gaye's trademark multi-layering vocal approach came off initially as an accident by engineers Steve Smith and Kenneth Sands.

Most of Motown's Quality Control Department team also turned the song down, with Balk later stating that "they were used to the 'baby baby' stuff, and this was a little hard for them to grasp.

[15] The album's original mix, recorded in Detroit at both Hitsville and Golden World as well as United Sound Studios, was finalized on April 5, 1971.

Presented to Motown's Quality Control department team, they were worried about future hit singles due to its concurrent style with each song leading to the next.

Reviewer Eric Henderson of Slant stated the song had an "understandably mournful tone" in response to the fallout of the late 1960s counterculture movements.

[17] Henderson also wrote that "Gaye's choice to emphasize humanity at its most charitable rather than paint bleak pictures of destruction and disillusionment is characteristic of the album that follows.

The song featured a memorable tenor saxophone solo from Detroit music legend Wild Bill Moore.

The title track, which had been released in January 1971 as the lead single to promote the album, sold more than 200,000 copies within its first week and two-and-a-half-million by the end of the year.

In 1994, the album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America in the United States for sales of half a million copies after it was issued on CD.

Writing for Rolling Stone in 1971, Vince Aletti praised Gaye's thematic approach towards social and political concerns, while discussing the surprise of Motown releasing such an album.

Writing in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), he deemed it both a "groundbreaking personal statement" and a Berry Gordy product, baited by three highly original singles but marred elsewhere by indistinct music and indulgent use of David Van De Pitte's strings, which Christgau called "the lowest kind of movie-background dreck".

[26] According to Paul Gambaccini, Gaye's death in 1984 prompted a critical re-evaluation of the album, and most reviewers have since regarded it as an important masterpiece of popular music.

[14] The Washington Post critic Geoffrey Himes names it an exemplary release of the progressive soul development from 1968 to 1973,[37] and Pitchfork's Tom Breihan calls it a prog-soul masterpiece.

[38] BBC Music's David Katz described the album as "one of the greatest albums of all time, and nothing short of a masterpiece" and compared it to Miles Davis's Kind of Blue by saying "its non-standard musical arrangements, which heralded a new sound at the time, gives it a chilling edge that ultimately underscores its gravity, with subtle orchestral enhancements offset by percolating congas, expertly layered above James Jamerson's bubbling bass".

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band [and] the rewired blues of Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited.

"[25] Richie Unterberger found the album somewhat overrated, writing in The Rough Guide to Rock (2003) that much of its "meandering introspection" paled in comparison to its three singles.

In 1997, What's Going On was named the 17th greatest album of all time in a poll conducted in the United Kingdom by HMV Group, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM.

In a revised 2020 list, this time voted on by musicians instead of music critics, the album moved up to the top spot, replacing The Beatles' Sgt.