Peter Gabriel — So
Truth is, I had written a long history of So, Peter Gabriel’s 1986 album, before I faced the very early 2000’s issue of my computer gobbling up my document without making an autosaved copy. Serves me write for using anything other than Google Docs in this day and age. Here are the bullet points:
Before So, Peter Gabriel was a critically appreciated, commercially middlingly successful solo artist.
He’d released four untitled solo albums after quitting influential prog-rock outfit Genesis in 1975, all of which were very interesting, experimental pop albums that reflected Gabriel’s eclectic sensibilities.
He had founded WOMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance), an international arts festival to promote world music.
His success had, in public perception, been overshadowed by the success of his former bandmate, Phil Collins, whose tabletop pop had become the sound of the eighties starting with his 1981 debut Face Value, and its lead single, In The Air Tonight, an influence that remains to this day. Since we are a culture that deals in myths and dichotomies, these sorts of perceptions tend to stick and become part of shared lore.
So challenged that narrative by exploding onto the scene in 1986:
It topped charts all over the world.
Its lead single, Sledgehammer topped charts in the US, largely off the back of a video that was both a cultural cornerstone whose influence can be found in every stop-motion and claymation video made since, and a huge commercial success, becoming the most-played video on MTV (ever?). It went on to win nine MTV Video Music awards, a record that still stands.
Its fourth single, Big Time, also made it to the top 10 in the US.
It managed to achieve this while not only staying true to a lot of the experimentation present in Peter Gabriel’s albums until then, but also fine-tuning that sense of sonic experimentation. There were particularly two innovations that were expertly pulled off in this album:
the use of sampling, particularly in the context of pop-rock, something that hadn’t really been done successfully before.
the use of world music influences without it sounding like out-of-place, wide-eyed orientalism.
In my view, this album is a classic of experimental pop, striking a deliciously fine balance between those two words that are unfortunately (read: incorrectly) often seen as contradictory: experimental and pop. While on the one hand there’s the soul-influenced pop sensibilities of Sledgehammer and the funk-tinged bridges of Big Time, on the other, there’s the worldbeat of This Is The Picture and the beautifully produced stillness of Mercy Street.
It isn’t a stretch to call this album mandatory listening.
Check it out on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube.
Check out my releases
Wonder what the point of music is on the sixth of March, twenty twenty two. Wonder if it serves the same purpose it served fifty, eighty, one hundred, one thousand years ago. Maybe six thousand years ago, that age’s Leonard Cohen wrote wryly of the migration patterns of wildebeest. I’ve been working on new music over the past half year. Here’s a pleasant house cover of the Cure’s Just Like Heaven.