19. Number six: "What's Going On". The album includes the title song and "Mercy, Mercy Me (the Ecology Song)". What late Motown artist recorded this album?
From Quiz Top 10 Albums From Rolling Stone's All-Time 500
Answer:
Marvin Gaye
The album was released in May, 1971 on Tamla records, a subsidiary of Motown. The album took on socially conscious topics of that period (some still with us) such as ecology, the Vietnam War, drug abuse, and poverty. This was the first real social conscious album Motown was involved with as well as Gaye. It lead to a great quote from "Rolling Stone" critic Vince Aletti in 1971:
Ambitious, personal albums may be a glut on the market elsewhere,
but at Motown they're something new ... the album as a whole takes
precedence, absorbing its own flaws. There are very few performers
who can carry a project like this off. I've always admired Marvin
Gaye, but I didn't expect he would be one of them. Guess I seriously
underestimated him. It won't happen again.
Tragically, Marvin Gaye was shot by his own father on April 1, 1984. Sadly ironic, it was with a gun Marvin had given him as a gift.