Peter Gabriel

Blending the dramatic flair from his early-seventies leadership of Genesis with broadly accessible melodies and songcraft, Peter Gabriel emerged as a global headliner who still carried the aura of an independent visionary. His first solo collection, issued in 1977 under his own name, ventured into shadowy, introspective realms while folding in experimental electronics, avant-garde textures, and global rhythms. That album and its two similarly titled follow-ups secured his standing as a respected solo figure; with Security in 1982 he edged toward wider acceptance, as “Shock the Monkey” became his initial Top 40 entry and opened the door for the 1986 triumph So. Bolstered by pioneering videos and the chart-topping single “Sledgehammer,” So achieved multi-platinum status. Rather than simply exploiting the moment, Gabriel launched Real World, a platform that gave international musicians across genres a reliable outlet. His sustained advocacy for causes such as Amnesty International further cemented his image as a principled figure in popular music, a stance he maintained well into the twenty-first century while completing i/o, his eighth studio album of original songs, finally issued in 2023—twenty-one years after Up.

After leaving Genesis in 1976, he turned to the first of three consecutive self-titled records, each bearing the name Peter Gabriel because, he explained, they resembled successive issues of a periodical. The 1977 debut achieved modest traction thanks to “Solsbury Hill.” Its 1978 successor drew milder notices. The third, however, marked a creative leap; produced by Steve Lillywhite and released in 1980, it positioned Gabriel among rock’s boldest innovators and most socially engaged voices, with “Biko,” a tribute to the slain anti-apartheid activist, becoming one of the decade’s defining protest songs. “Games Without Frontiers,” marked by its haunting refrain, climbed close to the Top 40.

Security, released in 1982, expanded his audience still further, earning strong reviews and gold certification on the strength of the striking “Shock the Monkey” video. Even as his solo profile rose, Gabriel joined a one-off Genesis reunion to underwrite the inaugural WOMAD—World of Music, Arts and Dance—Festival, an event created to introduce diverse global traditions to Western listeners. The festival soon became annual, and a live double album documented its early edition. While preparing his fifth studio album he scored Alan Parker’s 1984 film Birdy; the music received widespread praise and captured the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes. After establishing Real World, Inc. in 1985 to foster connections between technology and multicultural arts, he finished So.

The 1986 release became his commercial pinnacle, propelled by the Stax-inflected “Sledgehammer” and its groundbreaking stop-motion video. So reached number two while “Sledgehammer” topped the chart; “Big Time,” accompanied by a similarly inventive clip, entered the Top Ten, and “In Your Eyes” reached the Top 30. Amid this success Gabriel co-headlined the first Amnesty International benefit tour alongside Sting and U2 in 1986. A second such tour followed in 1988. The next year he issued Passion: Music for The Last Temptation of Christ, an instrumental set drawn from Martin Scorsese’s film; the project represented his deepest foray into worldbeat and earned the 1989 Grammy for Best New Age Performance. Shaking the Tree, a hits collection, appeared in 1990.

After extended labor on the successor to So, Gabriel delivered Us in spring 1992. Personal turmoil, including a difficult divorce, shaped a darker tone than its predecessor. Despite favorable notices, the album, appearing six years after So, achieved only platinum status; just “Steam,” a stylistic echo of “Sledgehammer,” cracked the Top 40. In 1993 he mounted an expansive WOMAD tour across the United States featuring Crowded House, James, and Sinéad O’Connor, with whom he shared an intermittent personal relationship. Secret World Live, a double-disc concert set, followed in 1994 and went gold. Later that year he released the CD-R Xplora, one of numerous Real World multimedia ventures. For the remainder of the decade he focused on further technology-driven projects and the development of new material.

Up arrived in 2002, a full decade after the previous studio album. Dense, contemplative, and often challenging, it peaked at number nine yet sold modestly in the United States while earning gold certification in Canada. Gabriel then pursued assorted side initiatives, though the release of Big Blue Ball—a compilation of collaborative sessions recorded at Real World Studios during the nineties—offered fans interim material. He returned to original work with Scratch My Back in 2010, an orchestral collection of covers originally performed by Radiohead, Arcade Fire, Paul Simon, David Bowie, and others. The sequel, New Blood, comprising orchestral reinterpretations of his own catalog, followed swiftly in fall 2011. In 2012 he marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of So with lavish reissues, including a four-CD, two-DVD, two-vinyl box set, and launched the Back to Front tour, performing the album in full.

Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in 2014—the same honor Genesis had received four years earlier—Gabriel also issued the concert document Back to Front: Live in London that year. He gathered scattered compositions on the 2019 compilations Rated PG, devoted to film contributions, and Flotsam and Jetsam, spotlighting B-sides and non-album tracks. Following a 2022 appearance on the Blue Note Leonard Cohen tribute Here It Is, he introduced “Panopticon” in early 2023 as the first single from i/o, an album he had begun in the early 2000s shortly after Up. Across two decades he refined its twelve songs, pausing for other projects or personal matters, completing them in early 2022 and then releasing the tracks sequentially throughout 2023 while touring before the full album appeared in December.