The one album Peter Gabriel said had his “best work”
It’s impossible to gauge where the hell Peter Gabriel is going whenever he makes new music.
He never felt content staying in one spot for too long, but when listening to the biggest albums he ever made, you’re in for some of the biggest swerves in between styles happening within the span of a handful of tunes. And while Gabriel was always immensely proud of what he worked on, he didn’t end up realising the kind of work that he made until it started getting attacked by the public.
Then again, Gabriel already had a few detractors in his own band when he was working with Genesis. It’s one thing for a band to have a sense of theatricality whenever they play, but it’s always going to be a bit more frustrating when the costumes actively get in the way of what everyone’s playing once they get onstage. And while Gabriel had no intention of slowing down, his solo records did at least give him some time to reflect on where he was going.
He wasn’t exactly looking for the same kind of mainstream success of every other solo superstar, but the frontman is one of the few artists who can say that the charts came to him. He refused to meet most fans halfway, hence why he outright refused to give his first four albums any set titles. It was all in the service of making art, but by So, the idea of the same guy making the convoluted story of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway having hits actually seemed possible.
In that respect, you can call Us a commercial follow-up, but Gabriel was already miles away. He was into making more ambitious music, and aside from a handful of singles, the biggest songs on the record felt like they had more to do with the world music that he had been touching on for the past few albums.
So, in essence, Up could have been viewed as a wave goodbye to the traditional way of making records. There are still the occasional pop hooks on the record, but Gabriel had become far more eclectic than anything that he had grown up with. This was the natural next step for where a prog rock legend like him should go, but even if the audience loved it, Gabriel was surprised to see the critics turn their back on him.
Despite a few outlets being outright bored or underwhelmed, Gabriel stood by the record as having his most ambitious tracks, saying, “To begin with, Up got some really bad reviews. Rolling Stone gave me a stinker, which was quite disappointing because I felt I’d worked bloody hard at it and it has some of my best work. It’s taken a while, but recently I’ve had musicians come up to me and say it’s my best record. Which is some consolation.”
But looking at the track listing, Up really is a record that’s easier to appreciate as a musician than a standard listener. The whole thing is absolutely pristine from a production perspective, and as much as people like the idea of their records sounding pretty, it’s much easier for Gabriel to show off the absolute genius of people like Manu Katche, Tony Levin, and Jon Brion than worry about what is going to be placing next to the likes of Britney Spears on the charts at the time.
And judging by where he would eventually go on records like i/o, Gabriel was clearly thinking about music in a much more ambitious way. He had spent his time at the top of the hit parade, and since he was done with that part of his career, it was time for him to move on to something a little bit more outlandish than trying to give his audience another version of ‘Sledgehammer’ or ‘Shock the Monkey’.
