1986: the year that Genesis dominated music
Most legendary artists have a glory period where it feels like nobody can touch them. Even if some musicians like the slow-burn approach to their career, having that one year where everything comes together is the kind of whirlwind that no one realises they want until they are on stadium-sized stages. While Genesis had graduated from prog-rock juggernauts to pop stars in the 1980s, every group member had their time in the sun once 1986 rolled around.
Then again, Genesis would have probably been one of the last bands that looked like they would survive the 1980s for a little while. Their incarnation with Peter Gabriel had always been about making drawn-out epics that made little sense, but whereas that catered to the visual medium of MTV, would anyone be willing to watch a 20-minute video when it came out?
When Phil Collins stepped up to the microphone, though, people were shellshocked to see the group transform into pop stars. It may have been treasonous for a handful of diehards, but it didn’t really matter on Invisible Touch. Even if the fans were happy with the title track, and ‘Throwing It All Away’, ‘Tonight Tonight Tonight’ let the group spread out, and the multi-part suite ‘Domino’ is good enough to stand alongside some of their other epics.
But that’s only what the main band was doing. Outside of the now-trio smashing it on the charts, Gabriel was hot on their trail with So, boasting some of the best prog-pop songs of the 1980s like ‘Don’t Give Up’ and ‘In Your Eyes’. After spending time in the art-rock world and creating the sound of 1980s drums on his third album Melt, Gabriel had ascended to the point where even his mainline band needed to catch up to him in some respects.
Even if the group was disbanded for a period, their ability to juggle solo acts was the kind of production that most labels can only dream of. With Collins becoming a solo star in his own right with No Jacket Required the same year and Mike + the Mechanics still riding high off of singles like ‘All I Need is a Miracle’, every member of the group succeeding practically gave them a license to print money half the time.
But how the hell was prog becoming the main order of the day? Well, since most of the musicians had been ahead of the curve in the 1970s, they were groundbreakers when everyone jumped on the synthesiser bandwagon, which made tunes like ‘Everything She Does’ off Invisible Touch sound much more en-vogue than someone that unboxed a Casio keyboard and convinced themselves that they were going to be a star.
That’s probably why even Steve Hackett charted a few hits that year. Since their counterparts, Yes, were riding the wave of ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’, Hackett’s supergroup with Steve Howe, GTR, got a hit on the radio with ‘When the Heart Rules the Mind’ that same year. When there’s that much going on, though, there comes a point where everyone gets overexposed.
While there’s nothing wrong with professional musicians getting rewarded for their music, being unable to avoid them is probably why the world was in for a sharp turn once the 1990s kicked in. As opposed to Collins getting treated like a god amongst musicians, there’s a reason why people like Noel Gallagher figured that he would rather try to stomp him out of the charts in the next decade rather than have to listen to something like ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ or ‘Sussudio’ one more time.
