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This song's lyrics constitute one of the most tortured and inappropriate analogies in the history of popular music. The idea is as follows. "The world is just a great big onion" (this is because it makes us cry, rather than the fact that it is made up of a number of geological strata a bit like the layers of an onion). No problems so far. But then we're told about "the only way to get rid of this great big onion". Ok, so we're getting rid of the world now. Fair enough. Curiously, the way to do this is "to plant love seeds until it dies". So we've killed off the world by sowing the seeds of love. To me that already sounds a bit of an uncomfortable situation to be in, but then Marvin Gaye shouts "Hey world! We've got a great big job to do. Yeah – we need you." At this point the whole onion idea really looks quite tenuous.

Anyway, a much better way to make the world a better place would be to rid it of gear changes like this one.

Listen!

Related stuff

This is a rather more conventional gear change than Chaka Khan's "I'm Every Woman", for which Ashford & Simpson were also responsible.