It’s hard to believe, but Mar­vin Gaye’s clas­sic 1967 record­ing of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” was orig­i­nal­ly reject­ed by his record label.

The song, about a man’s grief over hear­ing rumors of his lover’s infi­deli­ty, was writ­ten by the leg­endary Motown Records pro­duc­er Nor­man Whit­field and singer Bar­rett Strong. Smokey Robin­son and the Mir­a­cles first record­ed the track in 1966, but that ver­sion got nixed by Motown founder Berry Gordy dur­ing a week­ly qual­i­ty con­trol meet­ing. Then, Whit­field record­ed the song with Gaye in ear­ly 1967, but for some rea­son Gordy did­n’t like that ver­sion either. So Whit­field changed the lyrics a bit and record­ed it with Gladys Knight and the Pips. The fast-tem­po arrange­ment, influ­enced by Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” was released as a sin­gle in Sep­tem­ber of 1967 and rose to num­ber one on the Bill­board R&B chart.

Gaye’s ver­sion might have been for­got­ten had it not been includ­ed in his 1968 album, In the Groove, where it soon became noticed. “The DJs played it so much off the album,” Gordy said lat­er, “that we had to release it as a sin­gle.”

Gaye’s record­ing of the song became a crossover hit. It rose not only to the top of the R&B charts, but also spent sev­en weeks at the top of the Bill­board Pop Sin­gles chart. It was Motown’s biggest-sell­ing sin­gle up to that time, and the In the Groove album name was soon changed to I Heard It Through the Grapevine.

Gaye was known for his sweet-sound­ing tenor voice, which he could mod­u­late from a bari­tone to a silky high falset­to. Dur­ing the “Grapevine” ses­sions, the singer report­ed­ly quar­reled with Whit­field over the pro­duc­er’s insis­tence that he sing the song in a high rasp. Whit­field pre­vailed, and Gaye’s per­for­mance is one of the great­est of the Motown era. You can hear his clas­sic vocals “a cap­pel­la” in the video above. And for a reminder of Whit­field­’s clas­sic arrange­ment, with its puls­ing elec­tric piano intro­duc­tion and shim­mer­ing strings, see the video below. The Funk Broth­ers, the leg­endary Motown back­ing group, played on the track, as did the back­ing vocal group The Andantes and the Detroit Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Revis­it­ing Mar­vin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On,” and the Album That Opened R&B to Resis­tance: Revis­it­ed 50 Years Lat­er

Zoo Hires Mar­vin Gaye Imper­son­ator to Help Endan­gered Mon­keys “Get It On”

Hear Grace Slick’s Hair-Rais­ing Vocals in the Iso­lat­ed Track for “White Rab­bit” (1967)

Fred­die Mer­cury & David Bowie’s Iso­lat­ed Vocals for Queen’s “Under Pres­sure” (1981)

“The Sound of Silence” Is the Most Met­al Song of the Past Decade”: imag­ine that head­line, and the con­trar­i­an cul­ture piece prac­ti­cal­ly writes itself. Not so long ago, Slate was noto­ri­ous for pub­lish­ing that kind of thing, but it seems they’ve now put that sen­si­bil­i­ty behind them — or at least most­ly behind them. “If you’re in the mood for an under­dog sto­ry,” writes that site’s Luke Winkie, “I rec­om­mend perus­ing Bill­board­’s Hard Rock Dig­i­tal Song Sales chart. It is home to, gen­uine­ly, one of the most sub­stan­tial feats of endurance in the his­to­ry of pop­u­lar music, and it shows no sign of slow­ing down any­time soon. I speak, of course, of Dis­turbed’s cov­er of the Simon & Gar­funkel clas­sic ‘The Sound of Silence,’ which has been at, or near, the apex of that chart since 2015.”

While you almost cer­tain­ly know Simon & Gar­funkel, you may not know Dis­turbed, who’ve been steadi­ly pop­u­lar in the met­al world since the release of their debut album The Sick­ness in 2000. Lis­ten to that album’s big sin­gle “Down with the Sick­ness,” and you’re instant­ly trans­port­ed back to the turn of the mil­len­ni­um, when the exag­ger­at­ed­ly rhyth­mic and aggres­sive sub­genre of “nu met­al” reigned supreme.

Enter­tain­ing though the sheer incon­gruity of a nu-met­al ver­sion of “The Sound of Silence” would be, that move­ment had long since flamed out by 2015, when Dis­turbed record­ed their cov­er of Simon & Gar­funkel’s sig­na­ture song. Instead, they take the haunt­ing aus­ter­i­ty of the orig­i­nal in a grand­ly mourn­ful direc­tion, dri­ven by piano, strings, and the kind of cav­ernous sen­si­tiv­i­ty in which met­al acts occa­sion­al­ly indulge.

“Simon & Garfunkel’s ver­sion is best suit­ed for The Grad­u­ate,” writes Winkie, “while Dis­turbed’s take seems tuned for the end-cred­its scroll of a Trans­form­ers flick.” Inclu­sion in a Hol­ly­wood block­buster might have explained the song’s decade-long dom­i­nance of the afore­men­tioned Hard Rock Dig­i­tal Song Sales chart: a minor are­na in itself, but one in which this per­pet­u­al vic­to­ry reflects a wider cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non. Though young peo­ple may nev­er have heard Dis­turbed’s “The Sound of Silence” — or indeed Simon & Gar­funkel’s — it’s drawn intense and abid­ing enthu­si­asm from lis­ten­ers in their six­ties, sev­en­ties, and eight­ies, for whose approval met­al bands haven’t con­ven­tion­al­ly angled. Nev­er­the­less, it had to mark a high point in Dis­turbed’s career when, after per­form­ing the song on Conan, they received high praise from one par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­tin­guished mem­ber of that demo­graph­ic: a cer­tain Paul Simon.

via Slate

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Simon & Gar­funkel Sing “The Sound of Silence” 45 Years After Its Release, and Just Get Haunt­ing­ly Bet­ter with Time

Paul Simon Tells the Sto­ry of How He Wrote “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water” (1970)

Paul Simon Decon­structs “Mrs. Robin­son” (1970)

Fred Armisen & Bill Hader’s Comedic Take on the His­to­ry of Simon and Gar­funkel

Who Invent­ed Heavy Met­al Music?: A Search for Ori­gins

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.