In advance of a new interview with legendary songwriter-singer Michael McDonald we are conducting today, it seemed like the right time to share this single, one of several new recordings of classic songs. Here’s his new live performance of Marvin Gaye’s classic song, “What’s Going On.”
It’s one of many singles that he’s recording of classic songs which resonate in this uncertain moment when we need them most of all. He’s recording them mostly live with musicians in Santa Barbara, where he lives and often performs.
Of this song, he chose it for a reason we’ve been exploring here often, especially in this season of fear and loss and isolation: how certain songs of the past resonate now as much or even more than ever, perfectly expressing so much we are now experiencing.
“It’s uncanny and somewhat amazing,” he said, “how great songs relevant to a specific time frame in which they’re written only seem to grow in their profound resonance with the years.”
Exactly. They grow, so that we hear the original records we have heard for decades literally, and yet they reach us in new ways.
But this phenomenon is perhaps even more powerful when a great vocalist like him brings us a new version of a song we know, allowing us to hear it with fresh ears.
And as his fans know, since his days with Steely Dan, then with the Doobies and into his solo years, there is no vocalist who sounds like him. And very few who can take on a cover like this and bring it to life in a whole new way, and one which connects.
That raw, soulful, visceral sound that he creates when he sings anything has been one of the most poignant and vital sounds in popular music for a long time. And as his fans know well, when he covers a song, he makes it his own. Unlike the majority of the covers we hear, even those by great vocalists, we receive a great record, but one which doesn’t reach the level of the original.
Not so when he sings anything. Whether it’s “Knock On Wood,” which he performed with Phoebe Snow, or “What The World Needs Now,” his next single, that voice of soulful vigor equals, if not surpasses, the original.
Not to say that even Michael can surpass Marvin Gaye, one of the greatest artists of soul ever, and on this, his definitive song.
But he makes it his own, and brings home the lyrics which apply, sadly, yet so perfectly, to our present moment.
“There’s too many of you crying … There’s far too many of you dying…”
Here’s Michael with “What’s Goin’ On.”
