Tag: Peter Gabriel

Tunes

Eighties’ best 100 redux: #75 Peter Gabriel “In your eyes” (1986)

Post author By jprobichaud
Post date April 9, 2026
1 Comment on Eighties’ best 100 redux: #75 Peter Gabriel “In your eyes” (1986)

<< #76 | #74 >>

I didn’t mean to take a break. Honest. It just happened.

Save for a quick post sharing pics from the Matt Berninger show I caught, the last piece published to these pages was another Eighties best 100 post, just under a month ago. So I figured I’d return to our regular schedule (albeit a bit slower to start) after that brief pause with another from that series. Song #75 is perhaps Peter Gabriel’s most mainstream of tracks, “In your eyes”.

The track in question comes from Gabriel’s fifth proper studio album, the first not named “Peter Gabriel” (not including the soundtrack for “Birdy”, recorded the previous year), and likely, his best loved album, 1986’s “So”. This album is multiple-times platinum in a number of countries and has spawned his biggest hits on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. This is probably the result of Gabriel purposefully dispensing with some of his experimental tendencies and consciously making a pop record, albeit not without his usual world music influences.

“In your eyes” made my list not so much for the song itself, not that I don’t enjoy it, but instead for its place in pop culture and my own personal musical memory. Much like The Proclaimers’ “(I’m gonna be) 500 miles”, which was song #82 on this list, “In your eyes” had something of a resurgence when it was used on the soundtrack for a film and is perhaps more popular now because of it. It was used in two scenes in Cameron Crowe’s directorial debut film, 1989’s “Say anything”, but most famously, in the scene below:

If you’ve never seen the film, Lloyd Dobler (played by everyone’s favourite cool/not-cool kid, John Cusack) just had his heart stomped on by the well-meaning but misguided Diane Court (played by Ione Skye) and is trying to woo her back by serenading her with Peter Gabriel’s song. The film “Say anything” is perhaps the best teen 80s film not made by John Hughes and is consistently on lists of the best films of all time. The character Lloyd Dobler is now a cultural icon and there is an ongoing debate on the Internet over who was the better man between him and “Sixteen candle”‘s Jake Ryan.

My own money will always be on John Cusack.

Incidentally, when Peter Gabriel toured in 2012 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of “So”, performing the album in its entirety at each show, John Cusack appeared onstage at a handful of concerts in California, specifically during the intro to “In your eyes” to hand Peter Gabriel a boom box.

Original Eighties best 100 position: 77

Favourite lyric: “Without a noise, without my pride / I reach out from the inside” I don’t know if it’s so much about these lyrics as the way Peter Gabriel sings them. What a voice.

Where are they now?: Peter Gabriel has been active, off and on, throughout the years His last album of new, original material was 2023’s “I/O” and apparently, another album is due out later this year, this one called “O/I”.

For the rest of the Eighties’ best 100 redux list, click here.

Tags 1980s, Alternative, Best tunes, British rock, John Cusack, Peter Gabriel, Pop, Retro, Singer/Songwriter, Solo

Tunes

100 best covers: #42 Pop Will Eat Itself “Games without frontiers”

Post author By jprobichaud
Post date April 22, 2024
No Comments on 100 best covers: #42 Pop Will Eat Itself “Games without frontiers”

<< #43 | #41 >>

So here’s a topsy-turvy, chicken and the egg kind of story.

I remember hearing “Games without frontiers” on AM radio as a pre-teen not really know who the artist was or what the song was about. I much later became a fan of Peter Gabriel when I picked up his “Shaking the tree” compilation on CD in the midst of my 80s retro kick in the late 1990s and there, reacquainted myself with the track. However, prior to that, in the early 1990s, I became a fan of Grebo jokesters Pop Will Eat Itself, mostly because of their relations with The Wonder Stuff and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, bands of whom I was already a big fan. Years later, some time in the early 2000s, whilst exploring some of PWEI’s back catalogue that I had yet to consume, I came across this cover they did of “Games without frontiers” and with a bit more digging, found that it was their contribution to a fundraiser compilation supporting the peace efforts in Northern Ireland, called “Peace together”.

Peter Gabriel’s original version of the song was recorded for his self-titled third album, released in 1980. It features Kate Bush on backing vocals, plodding percussive and bass synths, a drum machine mimicking congos, whistling, and sinister guitar lines dancing along the minor key. It is oft-considered an anti-war song with a title referencing a well-known European game show and lyrics that equate politics with children games, rhyming off names of children from different cultures, all playing together.

So a good choice then for a band to cover for an album promoting peace. Pop Will Eat Itself’s cover is longer, predictably rage-filled, and rife with samples. Though its rhythm and its use of rhythm as melody is the same, the tone is indeed very different. It feels like they packaged it all up, Gabriel included, and shot it off into an apocalyptic future world similar to that found in “Tank girl”. Yeah, it’s fun in its angst.

Indeed, both versions are a gas and make you feel urbane as your happily singalong, but I think I may be siding with original in terms of preference, even as I replay the cover with the volume cranked.

Cover:

Original:

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.

Tags 1990s, Alternative, Alternative Rock, Best tunes, British rock, Cover, Covers, Grebo, Peter Gabriel, Pop Will Eat Itself, Retro

Playlists

Playlist: New tunes from 2023, part four

Post author By jprobichaud
Post date December 29, 2023
5 Comments on Playlist: New tunes from 2023, part four

Getting down to the wire now, heh? Just two more days left of 2023 after today. I think we might just manage it.

I usually do this thing sharing the final part of my ongoing annual playlist on the morning of New Years Eve but I’ve decided to switch it up for 2023. My last post of the year, the last word as it were, will be dedicated instead to my favourite album that the year offered us. It feels fitting now but we’ll see how it feels when it’s all said and done.

And I know I just inferred that the finish line is a welcome sight but honestly, 2023’s been a pretty good year. A marked improvement on the last, which was a huge leap forward on the previous two combined. I can’t really say things are back to normal* but they feel more familiar, if not weirdly surreal. The COVID is still around and the numbers still seem higher than they should be for a pandemic that is ‘over’ but we seem weirdly dismissive of it. Nonetheless, I’ve experienced a lot of post-pandemic firsts this year, like the first time back in the office, first time meeting some of my colleagues in person, first indoor concert, first train ride, first road trip across the border, whew. All of it has been exciting but also saddening for all the experiences that we collectively missed out on.

I don’t really want to talk about everything else that’s been going on in the world because it’s more than just a little crazy, so many deaths and so much damage and so much loss. So I’m just going to get back to the music. These last twenty five songs is a blend of new ones released over the last three months and a few b-sides, songs that had been released earlier on but for some reason, I missed them the first time around or just couldn’t fit them.

If you haven’t already perused them, I invite you to go have a look-see at parts one, two, and three. If you’re already in the know, have a gander at the highlights:

- - Kicking things off right with “Real life” a new song from the raw and frenetic Canadian indie rock trio, The Rural Alberta Advantage
  - Emma Anderson‘s (ex of Lush and Sing-Sing) debut solo album “Pearlies” has lots of great moments that show she hasn’t lost her dream pop sensibilities and “The presence” might be the closest sounding to epic Lush of the bunch
- - As Trans-Canada Highwaymen, Canadian 90s alt-rock royalty, Steven Page, Chris Murphy, Moe Berg, and Craig Northey unleashed an album of 70s Can-rock covers, like this faithful take on The Guess Who’s “”Undun”
- - “Panopticom” is the first track on the first new album of new material by Peter Gabriel in 21 years and shows he’s still incredible at what he does
- - Toronto-based Breeze gifted us 90s alt rock aficionados with an early Christmas present with a new album that includes the wonderful “Ready for love”
  - The dreamy “Amnesia” by M83 is definitely unforgettable
  - “Cicciolina”, from Cumgirl8‘s debut release on 4AD show that raw inventiveness that brought the legendary indie label to sign them