From their 1992 album, Bigger, Better, Faster, More!. The song reached #14 on Billboards Hot 100 chart on August 14, 1993.
From songfacts.
Recounting to origins of this song, Christa Hillhouse told us: “Any song people are going to try to read deliberate meaning into, but when Linda wrote the song, she was just sitting down the hall. We played guitar all the time, that’s all we ever did. We practiced every day. I know people who think about formulas when they write a song or they think about structure – Linda has never lived that way. Linda’s pretty organic in that way, she just sits down and starts singing what she’s feeling. There is a difference between the songs she wrote then and the songs she writes now. She got to a point now where I think she is thinking about them structurally, but back then, she played acoustic guitar and all the songs she wrote she’d just sit there and here they’d come. A lot of people write like that. I write like that – a song is kind of there already and you’re like the speakers. All of the sudden there’s a song in my head and I don’t know where it came from. I remember when she was writing the verses to What’s Up, she knew it so well, she thought she heard it before. I think that’s why the song connects with so many people. What she was feeling she was able to translate. If you look at the lyrics, they don’t mean anything. It’s the way the song makes certain people feel. In Europe, they’re not speaking English, but they know every broken-English word, and that song makes them feel something. I knew right when we played it, the song made the whole room feel this thing. It’s a connection to humanity. Certain simple songs, that’s what they do. There’s an honesty there that breaks through that people can relate to. Then of course they played that song to death and a lot of people are really sick of it.
What’s Up
Trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination
That the world was made up of this brotherhood of man
For whatever that means
When I’m lying in bed just to get it all out
What’s in my head
And I, I am feeling a little peculiar
And I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream from the top of my lungs
What’s going on?
I said hey, what’s going on?
I said hey, what’s going on?
Oh, oh oh
I try all the time, in this institution
I pray every single day
For a revolution
When I’m lying bed
Just to get it all out
What’s in my head
And I, I am feeling a little peculiar
And I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream from the top of my lungs
What’s going on?
I said hey, what’s going on?
I said hey, what’s going on?
I said hey, what’s going on?
I said hey, what’s going on?
Trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination
