What's Going On

Cyndi Lauper's "What's Going On": A Chart Run Built on Conscience and Coalition

In the spring of 1987, Cyndi Lauper released a cover of Marvin Gaye's landmark 1971 social commentary anthem as her contribution to the Artists Against Apartheid charity campaign, and the recording arrived at a moment when pop radio was rediscovering its capacity for political purpose. The single debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on March 14, 1987, entering at position 63, and over the following weeks it climbed steadily, reaching its peak of number 12 during the week of May 9, 1987. The song spent 13 weeks on the chart in total, making it a solid mid-chart performer rather than a blockbuster, but its cultural resonance extended well beyond its Hot 100 ranking.

The recording was not a solo project in the conventional sense. Lauper participated in a broader all-star initiative that produced a collective version of the Gaye classic, with proceeds directed toward fighting the apartheid regime in South Africa. The campaign drew in numerous prominent artists of the era, and Lauper's individual single was released alongside that collective effort. Her version was produced with a glossy late-1980s pop sheen that brought the song into alignment with the synthesizer-driven radio sound of the period, while still honoring the melodic and emotional core of the original Motown recording.

Marvin Gaye had written "What's Going On" in 1970 and released it in 1971, originally over the objections of Berry Gordy at Motown Records, who doubted the commercial viability of protest music. The track had become one of Motown's best-selling singles and one of the defining artistic statements of its era. For Lauper to select this song in 1987 was a deliberate act of lineage-claiming: she was placing herself within a tradition of artists who used their platform to challenge injustice, and she was updating that tradition for a new generation of listeners who had grown up with MTV and New Wave rather than Motown and soul radio.

Lauper's career in 1987 was at an interesting crossroads. Her debut album She's So Unusual (1983, Portrait/Epic Records) had produced four top-five singles and made her one of the defining pop figures of the mid-1980s, winning her a Grammy for Best New Artist. Her follow-up, True Colors (1986), had produced the number-one title track but had received a more mixed commercial reception overall. Releasing a politically charged cover in 1987 signaled both her continued artistic ambition and her desire to use her visibility for causes beyond the pop charts.

The chart trajectory from position 63 at debut to number 12 at peak represents a climb of more than fifty positions, driven by airplay momentum and the supportive media environment surrounding the anti-apartheid movement. Radio programmers in 1987 were broadly sympathetic to the cause, and the single's association with activism gave DJs and music directors an easy narrative hook for on-air promotion. The recording received heavy rotation on pop and adult contemporary stations, and its polished production values made it a natural fit for the mainstream formats that would carry it up the chart.

The music video, directed in the bright and saturated style typical of the period, reinforced the humanitarian messaging of the song and received significant airplay on MTV and VH1. Visual media had become central to the commercial life of a pop single by 1987, and Lauper had always understood the expressive power of the music video format, having established her visual persona decisively in the "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" clip from 1983.

The single was released on Epic Records in the United States and performed comparably in several international markets where anti-apartheid sentiment was strong among popular music audiences. In the United Kingdom, the song found radio support as well, as British pop culture had been heavily engaged with the South African political situation throughout the 1980s through initiatives like the Artists Against Apartheid coalition co-founded by Jerry Dammers of The Specials.

The song's 13-week chart run through the spring of 1987 positioned it as one of the more commercially successful charity singles of the era on the American pop chart, and it demonstrated that cause-driven music could achieve genuine mainstream traction when the artist involved had sufficient star power to carry the message into broad radio rotation. Lauper's reading of the song brought her political commitments into the open in a way that added dimension to a public image that had sometimes been reduced to its more colorful and playful surface elements.