Recording
What's Going On
Marvin Gaye
Independently chosen for3 of our lists. Here is what each of them said.
- Released
- 1971
- Label
- Tamla
- On
- Soul, The Waxonia Desk — One Subject, and The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
- Updated
- 2026-08-29
Ranked No. 1 in Soul
Motown's biggest star refused to make another Motown record and was proved right within a month. A protest song that sounds like a conversation at a party, and the label's finest hour was the one it tried to prevent.
Picked by The Waxonia Desk — One Subject
The obvious one, and four decades of broadcasting have made it harder to hear rather than easier. A record everybody agrees about is a difficult thing to keep alive.
Picked by The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
A protest record that sounds like a conversation at a party. Its label tried to stop it, which is usually the sign.
Analysis
6 sections, the first drop at 0:07, 3% of the way in.
- Tempo
- 103.4 BPM
- holds throughout
- Dynamic range
- 5.2 dB
- moderate range, typical of a modern master
- Length
- 3:56
- measured from the YouTube master
The record, end to end
Click the track to jump · ← → move between sections
- 0:00Aintro0
- 1:09Bpeakbar 30
- 1:28Cpeakbar 38
- 2:14Dpeakbar 58
- 3:01Cpeakbar 78
- 3:42Eoutrobar 96
Drop at 0:07 (bar 3). A drop is a moment, not a stretch — marked on the track above rather than shaded across it.
0:00 · A · intro
opens the record below its own average energy · sung
- Lasts
- 1:09
- Energy
- 71
- Brightness
- 19
- Density
- 95
- drums
- bass
- vocals
- other
sits at the top of this record's range · sung
- Lasts
- 0:19
- Energy
- 92
- Brightness
- 100
- Density
- 100
- drums
- bass
- vocals
- other
sits at the top of this record's range · sung · one of 2 stretches of the same music (C)
- Lasts
- 0:45
- Energy
- 98
- Brightness
- 50
- Density
- 85
- drums
- bass
- vocals
- other
sits at the top of this record's range · sung
- Lasts
- 0:47
- Energy
- 100
- Brightness
- 40
- Density
- 82
- drums
- bass
- vocals
- other
sits at the top of this record's range · sung · one of 2 stretches of the same music (C)
- Lasts
- 0:41
- Energy
- 96
- Brightness
- 61
- Density
- 83
- drums
- bass
- vocals
- other
the closing fall · instrumental
- Lasts
- 0:15
- Energy
- 0
- Brightness
- 0
- Density
- 0
- drums
- bass
- vocals
- other
Brightness and density are scored against this record's own sections, not against music in general — they say how its parts differ from each other, and nothing about how it compares to anything else.
- drums
- the drum kit, separated from the mix
- bass
- the bass part, separated from the mix
- vocals
- the voice, separated from the mix
- other
- everything else — synths, guitars, keys, strings
Separated into parts by a source-separation model, so each lane is the instrument it names.
- intro
- opens the record below its own average energy
- peak
- sits at the top of this record's range
- outro
- the closing fall
Measured from the YouTube master on . Section labels describe how the energy of the recording moves, not its musical form — a machine can see loudness climb and jump, it cannot hear a chorus arrive. Anything we were not confident enough to state is left out rather than shown with a caveat.