The Genesis chorus Peter Gabriel wishes they could change: “Never really loved it”
When an album’s appeal improves over time, it’s interesting to look at all the reasons why it struggled to stick in the first place. Genesis’ Selling England by the Pound, for instance, might be more of a fan favourite now, but there were many reasons why, upon its release, it didn’t entirely hook into all the parts of culture it was attempting to appeal to.
While it has since attracted positive widespread attention from many other significant players in the game, and is now considered among the band’s best work, Selling England by the Pound was perhaps too ambitious a feat to begin with. According to Peter Gabriel, the whole project was essentially an effort to tackle “Englishness in a different way”, taking a well-known Labour Party line for the title and using that as a conduit to explore both the decline of British culture and the criticisms the band faced at the time about selling out to the US.
Perhaps one of the most interesting parts about this material, especially as it was in its early stages, was that the concept of “Englishness” wasn’t exactly an active theme they were chasing from the get-go. Rather, it emerged during the writing stage after they began to recognise a pattern in certain song ideas, when themes of a broader cultural critique and their own position in the UK music scene started to recur.
One of the most interesting songs carrying this theme was ‘I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)’, about a groundsman who argues he’s happy simply operating a lawnmower and doesn’t want to aspire to achieve greater things. It was inspired by both a painting called The Dream by Betty Swanwick and The Beatles’ psychedelic sound, using additional things like a low Mellotron note to imitate the low hum of a lawnmower.
On vocals, Gabriel and Phil Collins sang together to make the lines sound thicker and more like a robotic chant, and during live performances, Gabriel would often don a hat and other accompanying visuals to look the part of the sonic antihero, giving it a quirkier, edgier feel whenever they brought the song to the stage.
However, despite appreciating its popularity, Gabriel argued the chorus was a bit of a letdown, mainly because he felt it was a little too basic and boring compared to the rest of the song, and while this might’ve stemmed in part from the fact that he was having to perform it repeatedly more often than not on the road, it’s easy to agree with Gabriel when it comes to the out-of-place nature of the chorus compared to the accompanying verses.
Discussing this during the Genesis 1970–1975 interviews, Gabriel admitted that, while he loved his own sections of the song, and that it was “fun” playing the “jerkier and jumper melodies of the verse”, he “never really loved” the chorus, mainly because he simply got bored with it. While the other sections hold different layers and intricate arrangements, he felt that the chorus was too “floaty” and simple.
Interestingly, one of the main reasons some critics found Selling England by the Pound to lack sturdy cultural grounding upon release was that it felt too erratic with ideas. Rather than focusing on one sort of sound or idea, it seemed to pinball around, pulling the different threads of each individual musician together in ways that didn’t always feel entirely coherent.
And considering Gabriel’s criticisms about ‘I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)’ feeling a little disjointed, it’s certainly easy to see it that way. However, you could also argue that these “inconsistencies”, as Mike Rutherford later called them, were precisely the picture of British culture they were attempting to mirror, channelling through the music the fragmentation of a community losing its edge.
