Peter Gabriel hits Alex with the 80's HARD! 

Peter's music was so much better than Genesis of the 80's

@@chrisgross2043 One of the tracks on "So" (I think it was "In Your Eyes") Peter had 96 different mixes of it before he could decide which to use. That's what makes this album a work of art :)

'Big Time' is a lot of fun too. I hadn't seen this video in years, so cool. Red Rain is another nice track from So.

Agreed. This tune did not sound like it belonged in the '80s. It's quality & style were more fitting for the '70s or '60s. It has a '70s funk mixed with a '60s Motown sound.

@@mowerdan8133 With a Chapman stick bass and a Fairlight CMI?

Still is kinda

Yes! So many songs from the 80s go best with the video

The dancing chickens get me every time.

So few albums can pull that off: "So" and "Dark Side of the Moon" & "The Wall" and Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours", among them. And we never cease celebrating those exemplars of end-to-end perfection. And to prove that point, he we are...

@@KozmikZootz don't forget Supertramp's "Breakfast in America" and "Crime of the Century"

Wow thank you for this info. It seems like yesterday we had 80s MTV

Wait, you mean MTV actually played music videos???? Who knew?

It's very hard for younger people of today to appreciate how a song 40 to 50 years ago was so musically ground breaking for it's time or how a music video was so technically innovative & advanced. Those of us that lived through those times know but most people almost a half century later don't have a clue unless they're some kind of musical historian so let's cut them some slack on any criticism.

And yet, it's just bad. The song is better without it,

It's almost like MTV had to overplay the video because Gabriel's people invested so much in it. As a fledgling cable station, MTV couldn't exactly ignore artists paying big $$$ to make music videos.

I have always HATED this song. Can't understand your take. That said, that's why music is what it is. lol. I think maybe I got so annoyed w the video back then I wrote it off.

This is the whitest comment that could have been made.

@@xavvi Hence why it's superior to your comment.

I would even go so far as to say it's rad.

@@thefallenfaith1986 lmaooo you tried at least

In Your Eyes is a classic! To me, live version is even better than the studio version!

Absolutely! That performance makes me very happy. It’s really uplifting😊

There you go, much better example that invokes the 80's better than Sledgehammer.

If I had to pick one Gabriel performance to show someone who'd never seen him, the Secret World performance with Papa Wemba and Paula Coles would be it. A tremendous ensemble around them as well.

I prefer the studio version but the live version reference is fine too.

Great song and great video. I saw Peter Gabriel in concert after this album was released. (I just turned 60 y/o) If you want 80’s songs that don’t sound like 80’s songs, check some of these. Robert Palmer “Addicted to love” (written by Tina Turner!) Violent Femmes “Blister in the Sun” The Clash “Rock the Casbah” Phil Collins “Mama” or “In the Air” There’s so many out there that are not the synth pop songs you’re expecting.

Grace Jones - Slave to the Rhythm

The Secret World tour was really special. Paula Cole was amazing!

@@KlausJLinke YES!

@@RonReaman Good suggestions, but... "Mama" is Genesis.

I am always shocked that "Shock the Monkey" does not get more attention from his fans

I like Shock The Monkey way mo than SLedgehammer

@@sirhoopalot1 Me too

For Peter its "Humour"

@@gavinhall6040 Indeed lol

I have to say that I like "Big Time" a little bit better than this one. But of course, Sledgehammer is iconic.

Amen!

Morning Allison,!!!!!!!!

Hey, @@Shadowrider1872! I hope your Monday is going well!!! ☺️

Well said Allison!

@@bradlandis7 thank you! 🤗

It's considered one of the best videos of all time.

Totally from what i recall they took like close to 1k still photos of Peter then did it like you would a stop motion animation.

The video was made using claymation, pixilation and stop motion animation and took just over a week to complete so yeah it was hella work but it won 9 MTV VMAs in 1987 so the work paid off. I believe it’s MTVs most played music video of all time.

@@angelskunk2206 The video is hailed as the first Claymation music video ever made, not true, Frank Zappa was using Claymation in videos a decade earlier

The work of Aardman Animations who went on to give us Wallace & Grommit and so much more. This was key to their gaining a wider audience for their work.

Very true

Shout might be the worst song of the 80s -- so yeah, it'd make for an interesting reaction

@@robland6804 If you hear it on your headphones with high volume and bass, and watch the video along with it, you might change your mind.

Tears For Fears are, for my money, the best pop band of all time. (pop the genre, not as in popular)

Up

@@robland6804so wrong! It's a fantastic song

I agree. If you were going to go visual, the live version would have been better, but I’m not criticising. Everyone should see this

Yay! Videos show us what to think before we absorb the music.

But there are certain songs that feel incomplete without the video. He could always listen to the song first, and then watch the video. I would love to see them make longer videos.

This and "Addicted to Love". EVERYWHERE!

You can hear Tony Levin on Dire Straits' "One World" (1985).

Stood in for Chris freaking Squire on the Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman & Howe tour

And Manu Katché banging the drums.

I vote Big Time

Tony played chapman stick on this. That breathing funky bass line is what made the song a hit.

The only pop artist to do a soundtrack for a movie about Jesus. Of course, it was wildly controversial.

He certainly did during the 80's. I think he was shocked by the level of attention and success that he achieved at that time.

Peter Gabriel has been nominated for 21 Grammys, and won six. *_What are you talking about?_*

@@rollomaughfling380 I think he means more recently. He has not maintained the same notoriety into the 2,000 's as some others in his era.

He's been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice (as solo artist and part of Genesis)... the hell are you talking about?

He's always been my favorite part of the song, especially if you watch it live.

yes he is the key to Peter's sound Big Time hits hard on the bass.

Tony's partnership with Peter has been one of the richest in rock history.

I assume you know Tony Levin was also playing for King Crimson at the time, playing a Chapman Stick. So cool to see him play it.

Tony's wife belongs to a group I was a member of for a while several years ago. When I met her, she casually mentioned that her husband is a musician -- "Tony Levin." The name didn't ring a bell at all, but I said: "Oh, that's very cool," just to be respectful. When I got home, I looked him up. Oops, what a resume!

The shakuhachi flute was a digital re-creation, played on a Fairlight CMI synthesizer. Ground-breaking stuff.

I'm not sure there was any "innuendo" in the lyrics. It was as blatant as any ZZ Top song.

There was plenty of CGI at the time. The stop-motion was rather retro + then newish compositing techniques for the right bit of modern wow.

@@JBN137 Computer Graphics? In 1986? DOS was the working interface at that time. Pong, Mario Bros, Space Wars, and PacMan were the standard for CGI at that time. And, maybe a stick figure of Vanna marching across an early Wheel of Fortune game. . Windows wasn't even a thing then. The modern computer graphic was exampled in "Sting's I Want My MTV" video. WYSIWYG had not been introduced . Yes, there was lots of stop-frame and claymation, but not in music videos! Yeah, not saying this was completely new, but this video didn't jump to #1 and won a record 9 video music awards, and declared MTV's best ever animated music video *of all time.* for no lame reason.

@@jimmayors2315 Study thus grasshopper: New York Institute of Technology, Robert Abel and Associates, Cranston-Csuri, Alias, Digital Productions, Wavefront Technologies, Fantastic Animation Machine, R/Greenberg Associates, Omnibus, amongst others, all bubbling up, merging and bifurcating from the late 70’s onward. You could just start with John Whitney Sr. from the 1950’s and go from there. To be precise, Whitney’s first best all-digital work was not until Arabesque in 1975. A favorite anecdote from the days of yore is that Digital Effects would ship their 9-track tapes from NYC to a commercial bank in Maryland to batch their frames on prob an IBM 360 or Data General check-processing machine. The finished renders would be read out to a 35mm Dicomed film scanner and further scanned to video if necessary. General purpose computing, and thus CGI, existed for a number of eras before DOS or Windows. Silicon Graphics was pretty much the last big hardware play before the brute force of hundreds of cheap, networked PCs finally took over, which seems to be about where your story starts. The music video won awards because it looked great, not because they invented a new way to do it.

but the video is more interesting than the song.

Agreeed. The video was so unnecessary. The vast majority of their reviews do not include videos and Alex seemed very distracted by it.

The problem is, both the song and the video are masterpieces of what art form they represent, like how The Shining is amazing as a book or a movie. Not good to mix the two at the same time.

The first time I saw Gabriel was the tour supporting this album. Absolutely amazing and he closed out with Biko

Yeah, that live video of "Biko" was the first time I saw a major artist crowd surfing from the stage.

Family and the Fishing Net, Family Snapshot, Rhythm of the Heat. That whole album takes me to a better place. Hard to believe it’s from 81 and it still sounds incredible

@@marktait2371 and the drummers of Burundi. I know a few people who saw him on that tour. They all said there was nothing in the realm of concerts they could compare it to. On ‘Lay your hands on me” ( not on Plays Live) the crowd literally passed him all the way to the back rows and back up to the stage. No grabbing, no foolishness. The way it should be.

games without frontiers

Even though Thriller always wins all the countdowns, I maintain that Take On Me is the best video of all time.

Yes I'd already gotten to knew and love the song from hearing it on the radio a week or 2 before I even saw the video.

Maybe, but those bands need to own that poodle mullet. This video was groundbreaking artistry.

I think they should make a whole video of the funny things they both say

Plus the re-working of the lyrics to stick in "St Elmo's Fire"

Not to mention that the movie of the same name is a great coming of age brat pack flick... anyone making the transition from college to "grown-up life" (as my daughter calls it) can really relate to it.

Was it really an 80's song if it didn't have a sax solo?

I met john a few times when I was in high school in the 90s. He was good friends with my music teacher and they worked on a few songs together. He's also from my home town. Restless heart is my favourite of John's. He did that for Arnie's film the running man.

@@BooEsq04 I would say the 70's had more sax that 80's. 1975-84 being peak sax.

Interesting! I never knew that!

@@allisonreed7682 As you mention, So has some beautifully atmospheric songs such as "Mercy Street" and "Red Rain," (EVH's favorite song from the album). Listen to the atmospheric song "Once" from 1997's Van Halen III and you may appreciate the Peter Gabriel influence. Especially listen to the bass line that begins at 38 seconds into the song, played by EVH rather than Michael Anthony.

@@johnhughes3214 I'll check it out! Thank you!

When AIR Montserrat shut down, record companies heaved a sign of relief and homogenized everything.

How much did the music video contribute to the creativity I wonder?

That said, "Lay Your Hands On Me" is, pardon the pun, my favorite song of his even though there was no official video (as far as I know).

Aardman were the creative visual team - props to them.

I want to see how the video was created

@@Meandmymirror That was a whole 'nuther level of grueling work. It's hard to appreciate how ground breaking this song, album and video was.

@@Meandmymirror it's very cool! How he had to lie down for hours while the slugs walked over his face. You'll love it, I'm sure! Sorry i don't have a link but I'm sure it's easy to find a how-to for this video.

Great song from the 80s! They should check it out.