C/D Peter Gabriel - So

Classic album tho and v. quintessentially 80s -- Gabriel, U2, and Sting were gonna save us from Reagan.

WHAT the FUCK!?!!

Upon reflection, however, even with a few admittedly classic singles, a lot of the songs on So leaned heavily on the state-o'-the-art production. And even that didn't hold a glow stick to any one of Trevor Horn's.

My disc ends with "We Do What We're Told," but then my disc is twelve inches wide. (How's that for big time?)

I say classic - mainly for "Mercy Street," but I still enjoy the whole album. And it's a spring album for me, so I should give it its yearly spin quite soon.

As for the album, I like every single song on it—even played-out standards like "Sledgehammer" and "In Your Eyes." Hard to believe it turns 18 years old this year.

This was my favourite album when I was 13 and 14. I used to hope a book would come out called 'So: The Answers', in which Peter Gabriel would reveal what all the songs were about. That is the most embarrassing thing I have ever revealed on ILX.

"This Is the Picture" was better as a Laurie Anderson song. (Although I haven't heard either version since 1986, so I may be wrong.)

The rest of the record is mediocre compared to other PG works.

It's great when you read something on ILM and think, "Man, I just totally agree w that" only to realize you said it.

I dunno. There's something about Gabriel that's extremely...juvenile. I'm not sure how else to put it. Like almost everyone else, this really appealed to me when I was 16. But upon reflection, his lyrics are sophomoric, not profound, his productions flashy, not sophisticated, his hooks obvious, not irresistable.

Maybe it's just music for sixteen year-olds.

Yes and no. "Mercy Street" appealed to the 15-y-old me because the music -- spare but pulsing -- and lyrics suggested something mysterious, just out of reach. This, "That Voice Again" (that odd guitar hook!), and "Excellent Birds" are the heart of the album.

This thread proves once again that on ILM there's a very thin line between cool and simply insane. Classic beyond belief, if not his best. In retrospect, this album's crossover success strikes me as very weird.

I came across a version of Red Rain live that featured Peter Gabriel, REM and Natalie Merchant. Granted, it was a slowed down acoustic version, but I laughed out loud. I mean who the hell decided that was a good idea? The THREE of them singing together??

"sledgehammer" and its video are wicked, also that "big time" tune is slammin'. i love the way they are totally overblown.

I'm stuck somewhere between rogermexico and Naive Teen Idol: it's probably his best, occasionally reductive, often overstated, works best when you're 16, still love "Mercy Street" and the singles.

ESPN Classic used "Don't Give Up" for their documentary on Muhammad Ali (in the segment dealing with his brain damage/Parkinson's), and it was absolutely heartbreaking and beautiful. So, yeah, that song is awesome, and I don't get the hate for it.

I just got Us a couple of weeks ago, never bought it despite owning everything from So & before, and it has about 4 really good songs.

But you revived a So thread to tell us? That's sad. "So" is like...eternal, whereas I don't remember a damn thing about Us.

Not trying to hate on you personally Mark, I've enjoyed your posts many a time in the past.

I wasn't sure this warranted its own thread, didn't see one, and it's certainly in the vein of So, so...

hahaha wonderful. Which songs are the 4 that you like?

"Blood of Eden"
"Digging in the Dirt"
"Come Talk to Me"

are all very good, anyway. I'd forgotten how much he could do with his voice then.

had you not heard (some of) these on the various Gabriel hits comps?

"Us" is excellent. Damn excellent. I may rank "So" slightly ahead of it (and the melt face one slightly about that one again), but "Us" is also absolutely gorgeous. Even though it wears a bit thin towards the end. "Blood Of Eden" and "Love To Be Loved" are both among his best ever moments.

I've become really fond of Gabriel's work in recent years. "That Voice Again" is an awesome song. I find his later stuff so sad, somehow.

How much later? A good bit of all of his stuff is *supposed* to be sad.

Also, gotta side with Geir on everything. Melty face is the best, But Us has more than four good songs. It's a darn fine record.

Well the stuff like So, Us and Up, I guess. It's just his voice and the melodies he chooses I think.

Oh, yeah, I see. I thought you meant sad like "Sad old man, stop making records, please." His last couple give me that kind of sad. :(

I never had a hits comp, but I did hear "Blood" and "Digging" around, just forgot how good they were. As good as anything on So. In my mind, I thought he was done after So but I was wrong.

"Up" was also an excellent album. No obvious hit singles, but lots of really strong songs.

this is my favorite album... the last time i listened to it was yesterday. i was gonna go see his 25th anniversary tour thingy when it came by recently but i wasn't able to due to work :(

v tender revive. ILM could use more slightly-sauced livetweets of classic albums.

"livetweets"

can't believe the three-disc set doesn't include the "special mix" of in your eyes. i guess that maintains the special-ness?

One of the coolest things I learned when watching the episode of Classic Albums on /So/ was that—and it never registered with me before—it was first time Gabriel ever really included high hat work. Daniel Lanois talked him into it and they brought in Stewart Copeland for "Red Rain" and then allowed it on some of the other songs. If you go back and listen to the previous albums, anything that sounds like a high hat probably isn't.

I haven't seen the DVD, but there should be bonus footage on there discussing the other songs... I've known this to the case with other DVD editions of the Classic Albums series.

Always thought it was kind of funny how Gabriel went from zero crash cymbals on his records to nothing but cymbals on So.

That new "So" boxed set supposedly has a bonus disc that shows the evolution of the album from demos to the final versions. I'm curious.

Saw him a few months back touring the 25th anniversary of this. It's amazing how supple his voice still is. I wouldn't have pegged him for a technical singer (I've always loved his voice but assumed that grizzled/manic timbre was something of a fluke). But he must have been doing serious vocal yoga through the years to still sing That Voice with power.

Missed the set, because I didn't feel the need to go, but he has had an uptick in vocal abilities I think. Or at least he paces himself well. I think it helps that his daughter sings backup. Genetics help.

Listening to So DNA for the first time today and i'm finding it rather engaging. Instead of showing primordial versions of each track, they're mixed to demonstrate how the individuals matured, so you start out with the basic sketches of the track up front and the nearly finished track at the end.

I've never seen anybody take this same approach; leave it to Gabriel to bring something fresh to the concept.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvzQyhzCK7c

Thanks for the push to listen to this. "Sledgehammer" origins are radically melancholy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJU_MLQc2fc

Yes; i've played this through several times and it continues to reward.

That's completely wonderful, I need to get hold of this

This is definitely interesting – if for no other reason than it demonstrates again how a big part of success in the studio often involves doing semi-embarrassing things with your voice. He and Eno are big proponents of dada vocals.

Except that Eno leaves the dada lyrics in!

Fair enough.

I'm also kind of impressed with how certain songs, like "That Voice Again," really are sequenced as a crescendo of sorts – where it begins as a fragment on piano and climaxes as you hear all the elements begin to come together.

I'll be interested to see if this is any kind of influence on other artists who want to demonstrate how a work of theirs came together.

It's hardly surprising then I guess, that it takes him a while to release records if there are 5 incrementally evolving, demo versions of each song to be worked through first. That's what happens when you have your own professional recording studio.

Between this and "Scratch My Back" and "New Blood" seems like reworking of old material is about all he can currently manage. While it's all interesting, i sure hope it serves to recharge his batteries towards some truly new material.

Wasn't he working on something new? Thought I read that recently.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/is-peter-gabriels-new-album-finished-20131209

March, then. But no year.

I hadn't heard about that new material; some other neat stuff in that interview as well.

Gah, where the hell did that threat of Phish come from?

Also, that March thing was clearly a joke.

watch them fall

There's obviously some slick stuff on here, but it's still a weird, different sort of record. His sideways version of sophistpop, if you will. It's aged well, too, which may be surprising, given how much its "gaseous cloud" sound has been copped.

"We Do What We're Told" is stunning, and I love that it's about Stanley Millgram's Stanford Prison Experiment

one of the lesser free jazz combos of the 60s iirc

They were no Pavlov's Dog, that's for sure

Saw this in a 2019 Billboard interview with Don Was:

In 1986, I hit rock bottom. I was producing records unsuccessfully, including for this English guitar band that the record company wanted us to put synthesizers all over...I was flying out to L.A., and left the multi-tracks of one of the band’s songs in a New York taxi with no safety copy. In the end I was able to recover them, and all I had to do was move the session back one day. But in that moment, I thought I’d fucked up so badly. I think I had the advance copy of Peter Gabriel’s So, and I kept playing “Don’t Give Up” over and over on my Walkman on the way to the Newark airport, crying — I just felt like such a schmuck.

And of course, like something out of a Hollywood movie, pretty much everything turns around for him - "because that session moved back a day, I got to a studio in L.A. called The Complex on a Sunday instead of a Saturday. Because I was there on a Sunday, Bonnie was there, working in another room. That’s how I met her. I wouldn’t have met her if I hadn’t lost that master tape." But first Was (Not Was) out of nowhere blows up, even landing a top ten hit, then within months he'd produce Bonnie Raitt and the B-52's first (multi-) platinum-selling hits. "Don't Give Up" indeed.

The Ward Brothers?

I think so. Floy Joy is the only other possibility but it looks like they didn't even have a guitarist in 1986.

one doubt
one voice
one war
one truth
one dream

― the ones that I'm near most: fellow outcasts and ilxors (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, October 26, 2012

happy 40th to this grebt album

all time

did we poll it? hard to pick a favorite

must be a bit of an outlier in his career because I adore this but apart from certain songs could never really get similarly into his other solo output (or genesis)

I enjoy it a lot. "Mercy Street" is probably my favorite track now - I didn't even know who Anne Sexton was for years and finally I was moved to just buy a cheap, used copy of The Complete Poems.

I do see a lot of Peter Gabriel fans who will dump on this album, basing almost their entire argument on the two most commercial songs, yet the hard data suggests that it's one of his most acclaimed albums, never mind popular. (Number 7 in the Pazz & Jop poll, easily his highest placing.) Not sure if that's changed but I always found that polarized reaction strange and amusing.

remains one of my all time favorite albums, one of the rare 'make a commercial album' attempts from an art rock mainstay that absolutely succeeded on every front.

This album came out when I was a sophomore in high school, and I liked it a lot (also liked Security, possibly even more, but wasn't super into the earlier albums aside from one or two songs on each). I saw the So tour, which I remember being really good, but just like when I saw the Roger Waters-less Pink Floyd a year later, the concert kinda marked the end of my interest. I didn't listen to Pink Floyd for like two or three years after seeing them live, and I pretty much lost interest in Gabriel after seeing him live. I've never heard any of his post-So albums, and I haven't listened to this one since then. I wonder if I should revisit it.

I do see a lot of Peter Gabriel fans who will dump on this album, basing almost their entire argument on the two most commercial songs, yet the hard data suggests that it's one of his most acclaimed albums, never mind popular.

I asked this today on Bluesky. Other fans might, understandably, have other favorites, but does any Gabriel stan in 2026 dismiss So? I'm more interested in knowing if his college radio fans, who'd watched his album sales and radio play swell since 1980, thought the album was a sellout.

Found it!

The BIG TIME Peter Gabriel "So" Poll

Sometimes you can hear an album once and know instantly it's going to be one of the greatest things you've ever heard, which was exactly my reaction upon hearing the first few notes of "Red Rain" back in 1986.

― HI DERE, Thursday, August 14, 2008

yeah I don't think anyone really dismisses this album now. It's easier to dismiss Up or something (fwiw I think all the post-So albums have something to offer; Passion was really the last time he did anything 'new' though)

This album is a bit played out for me, will still rep for it though. These days I play the best stuff from his work this century, the highs of which are very high.

one of the rare 'make a commercial album' attempts from an art rock mainstay that absolutely succeeded on every front.

I dunno, it sounds commercial because it *was* commercial, but I don't necessarily think this is some sort of clear commercial attempt, other than being less objectively weird than his previous stuff (which wasn't hard to do, lol). It might have *become* massively commercial, and massively influential, but I'm not sure there was any clear antecedent or template that determined its direction, let alone its huge success. Lanois didn't have much of a commercial track record yet, the band was still mostly his group of weirdo geniuses, the songs are all pretty long and unconventional, aside from "Sledgehammer."

Speaking of which, anyone that still hasn't heard the "DNA" demo medleys Gabriel released might find them all as fascinating as I did. Like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJU_MLQc2fc

"sledgehammer" and "big time" are the two songs in that mode and they're not the highlights but are still decent and endearingly goofy

but then doing that again with "steam" feels like diminishing returns

Wow, had never heard that DNA before.

I think they may exist for every or most track? Here's a good overview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yudjbg8p9hI

It's amazing hearing something like this come into shape:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvzQyhzCK7c

Yeah, I have a copy of the DNA CD from the album box set somewhere - a great audio verite document of how everything came together.

PG in skinny jeans and old school flip-flops is the scariest costume he's worn since the Genesis days.