"What Goes On" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, featured as the eighth track on their 1965 album Rubber Soul.

The song was later released as the B-side of the US single "Nowhere Man", and then as the tenth track on the North America-only album Yesterday and Today.

[6] There is no formal middle eight in the song, although one chorus and one verse are extended; Musicologist and writer Ian MacDonald believes those longer sections were written by McCartney.

[3] John Lennon and Paul McCartney recorded a demo of this version in 1963, but the song was not used until 1965 as Ringo Starr's vocal piece for Rubber Soul.

Beatles writer Kenneth Womack asserts that the song is "quite arguably the weakest and most incongruous track on the album.

[7] For AllMusic, Richie Unterberger writes the song is an "enjoyable if lightweight" country & western-flavoured entry in the Beatles catalogue.

[23] Sufjan Stevens recorded a cover of the song in 2005 for the compilation album, This Bird Has Flown – A 40th Anniversary Tribute to the Beatles' Rubber Soul.

"[24] Barry Walters of Rolling Stone magazine writes, "Changing chords, rewriting melody, overhauling rhythms and resequencing large chunks of lyrics, the ever-ambitious Sufjan Stevens turns 'What Goes On' inside out with an intricate stop-and-start arrangement that affirms Rubber Soul's elastic strength.

"[25] Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic was less favourable, describing Stevens track as, "the only severe misstep in an album filled with good, generally pleasant covers.