4 Non Blondes — What’s Up

I wasn’t planning to feature What’s Up as this week’s #ThrowbackThursday song when I mentioned it in the *Marcelo Deiss*’ entry, but I’ve stumbled upon it quite a few times since then, I even listened to a nice cover I might feature in the near future. It is a great and extremely catchy song, don’t get me wrong, but chances are you know that already. After all, it’s a classic.

*4 Non Blondes are considered one-hit-wonders but that’s basically because they didn’t give themselves another chance. The band broke up shortly after What’s Up became an international hit, and it was just the second single off their first and only album. However, lead singer/songwriter Linda Perry remained active within the music industry, founding record labels and writing and producing hits for other artists, including by Christina Aguilera. By the way, Linda hated how What’s Up* was produced for the commercial version we all know. She preferred her demo version but it hasn’t been released.

One final piece of trivia: the song’s title is never mentioned in the lyrics. What is mentioned, quite prominently, is “ what’s going on”. However, there is a classic Marvin Gaye song with that name, which is why, in order to avoid any confusion, they went with What’s Up instead.

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Originally published at http://thealternativemixtapes.com on April 1, 2021.