With “Biko” as my favorite Peter Gabriel song, I thought I’d share my next six – my second to seventh favorites next. Four of my seven favorite Peter Gabriel songs come from his 1986 album So. (Each song is linked to one of its YouTube videos.)
7. “Here Comes the Flood”
“Here Comes the Flood” is an epic in five minutes. I find it brilliant, with a sensitivity to it, and beauty, and not just genius but wisdom. It starts with a quiet warning, builds as it goes, and ends big.
To me, Gabriel’s saying there’s still hope that we, the dreamers of Eastertide, can rise above our jadedness and drink the rain. We’ve got to stop being isolated from people. Got to break down barriers. Let the walls down, stop hiding, stop acting.
At the same time, he’s saying that people who are honest can take on new insights. People who hide their thoughts and feelings will be lost. And he’s saying that people can see into each other’s minds. It’s about psychic and telepathic awareness – and how that deeper wisdom might flow into our whole society.
6. “Mercy Street”
In “Mercy Street”, I experience Peter Gabriel as he experiences what the poet Anne Sexton experienced. How she’s totally alive even as she feels the pale and languid emptiness of suburban life. How she dreams of tender and merciful people with better souls. So she writes her poetry. And when that doesn’t heal her, she enters the boat and rides the waves out to sea.
The true sadness of Gabriel’s song touches my nerves and gives me heartache. I think of Sexton’s suicide and of life and death and loss. The melancholy reaches in deep and moves my soul.
Sometimes the gentle, lilting rhythm draws me into a mesmerizing trance. The song carries me into something sacred and toward something Divine. And I find myself experiencing a catharsis. It’s a therapeutic song, a healing song, that leaves me reaching for connection – connection to something beyond myself and connection with my fellow human beings.
5. “Red Rain”
For starters, “Red Rain” has that unique Brazilian rhythm. And Peter’s singing voice comes together with the instruments perfectly. There is the passion and the complex emotions: mystery, comfort, warmth – the way the song soothes you even as it hits you in the gut with reality.
The vibe of the song gives me goosebumps and sends chills up my spine. The song seems to be from a transcendent dimension. I feel the awe of the song in my bones. I feel it course through my whole body.
We listen to Peter Gabriel sing of standing at the water’s edge, silent, sensing a storm but feeling no pain. Then the pressure grows and keeps returning. Only by letting his defenses down, moving past his denial, and trusting like a child can he let the red rain pour down.
The song invites us to let go of some our own painful thoughts and feelings. Take what’s been festering, take what we’ve been repressing and denying, and bring some of it out. And let it rain down into our conscious awareness.
4. “Don’t Give Up”
In “Don’t Give Up”, we listen to Gabriel express what it’s like to grow up strong and wanted, taught to win, thinking you’ll never fail – and then to lose, to not be needed, to have your dreams desert you, and to not be able to take it anymore. And we listen to Kate Bush express what a friend or spouse or loved one would say: let go of your worry, let go of your shame, remember that your friends are still proud of you and that there’s still a place in this world where we belong.
We hear Gabriel express the loss and disillusionment and despair of a broken man. Unemployed and unemployable, his place in the world is slipping away from him. He’s lost his purpose, and he feels hopeless.
And there is Kate Bush’s angelic voice, responding with comfort, consolation, reassurance, emotional support, and encouragement. She is tender yet strong and soothing, and in protective love she pours out healing oil on the wounds to his identity.
It’s a poignant, soulful song with a powerful message: Whatever life’s throwing at you, whatever you’re going through, no matter how much you’re struggling, look up and see who’s standing by your side.
Life delivers it blows. Things get grim. We become embattled. But if we banish the dark thoughts, we can get through the difficulties. From our lowest points and hardest times, each of us can find new purpose in this world.
This evocative ballad with its Gospel piano tune and, in its final minute, light Gospel vocals, not only brings us hope. It reminds us to be a loving friend and helps show us how.
3. “Solsbury Hill”
In “Solsbury Hill”, I hear a masterwork. I hear elevation, illumination, an affirmative anthem. Even something sacred, something transcendent – a mystical vision in which Gabriel broke through to a new level of consciousness.
Gabriel sings about climbing the ancient hill at night, seeing the city lights below. The wind is blowing as he’s frozen in time. There’s an eagle. A voice speaks to him, compelling him to listen with his whole being. He can’t believe he’s receiving the imparted information, but he wants to trust it. His heart “goes boom boom boom”, something miraculous has happened to him that his friends will think is nuts, so he’ll keep silent about it. He’s been misled by machinery and illusions and now he’s been shown another version of himself. And he hears the voice say he should grab his things cuz it’s time to take him home.
So he’s accepting a promising new reality. He’s let go of an old perspective and is reaching a new perspective. He’s had an epiphany, a rebirth, an awakening, a transformation.
The part about the journey home, being guided home, seems to be about home as returning to a spiritual state. I hear him stepping across the threshold into the next journey in his life. Faith in a new beginning and a new guiding vision. It’s an awakening into a freer being.
What has Gabriel said about this song in interviews? He’s said it’s him sitting and meditating on the hill. Creating space for something new to happen. Letting go of what you are and what you’ve got – to reach for what you might be, to get something better. And that he plugged into something. He said in one interview ‘Solsbury Hill’ was his encounter with Christ.
I thought he was a Buddhist. Must be a Buddhist and a Christian. Or maybe he’s a pure mystic. Does it matter? He had transcendent experiences, some kind of revelations, and he came out more enlightened, strengthened, full of joy. In the end, I don’t care about the details. Peter Gabriel’s not a pastor or priest or guru. He’s a musician. And the song is sublime.
2. “In Your Eyes”
With “In Your Eyes”, we listen to Peter Gabriel sing about feeling lost and empty behind his façade. But when he lets go of his pride, and reaches out from deep within himself, he feels a resolution and completion. Like doorways to churches, in other person’s eyes he finds light and heat and reaches out to touch that light and heat.
The Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour adds the stunning enchantment of his culture as sings his lyrics in the Wolof language. His voice, like liquid gold, rises out of the heart of Africa, and seems to arise from Heaven itself.
The song seems most fitting to a romantic relationship – to two lovers. But it can be found at the promise for a deeper presence in all our relationships – at least when both persons are reaching toward some kind of spiritual transcendence. Or it can even be about love between a human being and the Divine Being. Gabriel says in an interview that “the eyes are clearly a focus point of the soul” and that the song is about “love of God”.
This hymn is about the ineffable sense of fulfillment two beings can find when they enter into a deeper presence with each other. All we have to do is change the way we see each other, and we are transported into or immersed in a new connectedness in a new space. It’s a song of joy and hope and the beauty of the human soul.
Well dang Mike, your heartfelt description of "Don't Give Up" hit home and brought tears to my eyes.