The music video that inspired Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’
Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’ served as the lead single to his fifth studio album, So, released in 1986. The track would go on to become one of his most internationally-known – largely due to its groundbreaking accompanying video. The revolutionary, eye-popping stop-motion visuals ushered in a new era of music video that saw directors begin to realise the potential of the medium.
Gabriel credited the song’s success solely on the music video, telling Rolling Stone, “I’m not sure [‘Sledgehammer’] would have been as big a hit…without the video. I think it had a sense of both humour and fun, neither of which were particularly associated with me.”
During the week-long shoot, Gabriel lay under a sheet of glass while filming the video one frame at a time – at one stage, remaining there for a gruelling 16 hours. It makes the whimsy and humour we see throughout all the more impressive, with the former Genesis frontman managing to smile as steamtrains chugged in front of his face.
The video wasn’t just entertaining, it brought viewers methodically through the track, breathing life into its lyrics. Bumper cars, popcorn and candy floss hair colour the line, “You could have a bumper car, bumping / This amusement never ends” whilst a Giuseppe Arcimboldo tribute – by way of fruit aligning in the shape of Gabriel’s face singing – plants firmly in the mind of the viewer the lyrics, “Show me round your fruit cakes / ‘Cause I will be your honey bee / Open up your fruit cakes Where the fruit is as sweet as / can be”.
In 1987, the video swept all major categories at the MTV Video Music Awards, taking home a total of nine trophies, including Video of the Year. Gabriel ultimately knocked his former Genesis bandmates off from the No. 1 slot on the US Billboard Top 100 when ‘Sledgehammer’ took the place of ‘Invisible Touch.’
With Nick Park – who later went on to create the award-winning children’s series Wallace & Gromit – supporting on animation duties, the video was directed by Stephen R. Johnson. One year prior to the creation of the ‘Sledgehammer’ video, Johnson was responsible for the making of Talking Heads’ classic ‘Road to Nowhere’. In a similar vein to ‘Sledgehammer’, wit is laced throughout the video that sees members of Talking Heads move through life and the routine as David Byrne sings through the track from “Well, we know where we’re goin’ / But we don’t know where we’ve been” to “We’re on a road to nowhere”.
Pioneering the use of stop-motion animation in music videos, ‘Road to Nowhere’ undoubtedly contributed to the blueprint for Gabriel’s subsequent release. But whilst the former featured hints of the visual effect, ‘Sledgehammer’ brought new ambition to animated music videos, utilising stop-motion for almost the entire video. In an interview with WMMR Rocks, Gabriel commented, “It took a lot of hard work. I was thinking to myself ‘If anybody wants to copy this video, good luck to them’”.
