A question posed to a nation, a cry of confusion and pain from a man watching the world fall apart around him. Marvin Gaye recorded it as the centerpiece of his landmark album, a song that asked the hardest questions without pretending to have easy answers. What's going on? The question is not rhetorical. It is genuine, bewildered, the sound of a man who cannot understand why the world refuses to learn from its mistakes. The song changed everything about what soul music could be about.

That same question gets a 21st-century update from