“It just made sense to have Marvin’s voice in the movie as another character.”Yet nearly 50 years after Gaye captured the tumult of that early-’70s moment, “What’s Going On” speaks no less vividly of our own era. (July 27) Jazz supergroup 'Dinner Party' drew from Marvin Gaye's playbook "Everybody in the movie, the five Bloods, they all love the songs, they all know the album back and forth," he said, adding that 30-year-old Jonathan Majors, who plays Lindo's character's son, knew the music too. "But this was also part of that sound — the voice of Black America speaking out that we couldn't always smile on cue for you." "He wanted to sing more about looking around at the world and going, 'This is all happening.'" “And that’s the reason we’re going through what we’re going through.”For Blanchard, the enveloping beauty of “What’s Going On” is inseparable from its social consciousness. “He wanted to sing more about looking around at the world and going, ‘This is all happening.’”But what precisely was “this” in an overwhelming age, not unlike 2020, that could seem beset by some new calamity every month or two? Marvin Gaye is photographed at Golden West Studios for Motown Records during the …
I’d been singing too loud.” Here, in contrast, he found a softer, dreamier tone; often, he’s singing in a falsetto that Legend described as “haunting and beautiful.”In fact, the music is so pretty that it’s possible to lose focus on Gaye’s stark lyrics about the “trigger-happy policing” he details in “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler).”“Choosing to not hear the words and just dealing with the melody is what’s been happening with well-meaning people across the country,” Blanchard said, meaning individuals who pay only cursory attention to what protesters are saying about America. When Marvin Gaye released What’s Going On in 1971, it marked a bold shift in his career. By this point in the story, we've already gotten to know the men, but in hearing them sing Gaye's words, we come to understand how deeply they were bonded by the shared experience Lee's film seeks to illuminate. During the Bowl show, which took place just weeks after the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown at the hands of police in Ferguson, Mo., Legend wore a T-shirt that read, "Don't Shoot." Microsoft may earn an Affiliate Commission if you purchase something through recommended links in this article.
... Marvin Gaye in the studio in January, 1971. "And that's the reason we're going through what we're going through." Yet the director's prominent use of "What's Going On" in "Da 5 Bloods," which explicitly connects historical trauma to the current moment with a subplot involving President Trump, argues that Gaye's statement still resounds — and that it can still open minds.
About Tomatometer. By most accounts, he was directly inspired by his brother Frankie’s experience as a returning vet, though earlier uprisings in Watts and in Detroit had left him conflicted about singing the upbeat love songs — “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)” and “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” for instance — that had made him a star. "Marvin felt funny wearing a suit and, as he put it, stomping the grapes," said Harry Weinger, vice president of A&R at Universal Music Enterprises, which oversees the Motown catalog. Now streaming on Netflix, Da 5 Bloods released in June 2020.
Lenny Kravitz to Star in Marvin Gaye Biopic Nov 26, 2012. ... Sundance 2020 Movie Scorecard – Rotten Tomatoes; View All.
"This is what the brothers in Vietnam were listening to, and what they were listening to as they came back," said Lee, who recalled his own introduction to the album as a high-school student who'd finally saved up the money to buy his own stereo system. “And that makes the song incredibly relatable — almost like Marvin doesn’t know any more than you, the listener, do.”For some listeners, the anguish in “What’s Going On” was more recognizable than for others.
The style Gaye developed for "What's Going On" — which he produced himself, much of it in Detroit over a single 10-day stretch — was lush but mournful, peppered with Latin percussion and lightly gilded with strings played by members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.