A sprinkling pitter-patter of cymbals tentatively commences. Then, several reverberating echoes from the distant sound of thunderous drums bring with them a deluge of modern synths and the lightning strum of a backbone-bass. And “So,” Peter Gabriel’s 1986 pop-rock album, comes at you like a shower of “Red Rain,” cleansing your deepest, darkest, and most human feelings.
Gabriel’s nine-track record “So” hits its 40th anniversary on May 19. Throughout the album, the progressive pop rocker experimentally builds an addictive chemistry between the primal cave of human emotion and the sensual cityscape of a modern atmosphere. While this musical dichotomy flies the listener past the clouds, Gabriel’s deeply visual lyricism expands “So’s” universe even further.
After Gabriel soaks a clandestine dreamscape with “Red Rain,” he thrusts listeners into the chart-topping “Sledgehammer.” The banging track — pun intended — preheats the ears with a titillating flute melody before climaxing in a chorus of trumpets. Then, the mind is “put at rest” as Gabriel resolves the tension in the preceding song and sinks into “Don’t Give Up,” a sentimental duet with Kate Bush.
Heading into the next two tracks, the synth-backed drums on “That Voice Again” cue in like a classic ’80s rebel yell, which then drive straight into a more sonically enveloping tune. Here arrives “Mercy Street” — inspired by Brazilian Forró music and Anne Sexton’s poetry — which echoes ghostly lyrics and mystifies the darkness of suburbia at night. After floating through that foggy patch, Gabriel reinvigorates the scene with a punchy “Hi there” on “Big Time” before laying the bricks with “We Do What We’re Told (Milgram’s 37)” and “This Is the Picture (Excellent Birds)” toward an unmatched bookend: “In Your Eyes” — Gabriel’s magnum opus.
As a song that most impactfully juxtaposes past traditions and contemporary sound, “In Your Eyes” sums up “So” in five minutes and 30 seconds. You might recognize the tune from the romantic comedy “Say Anything” — specifically, that classic zoom-in on John Cusack’s character holding up a boombox with perhaps the most religiously felt conviction ever seen in a man’s eyes. Such is the feeling that Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” provokes in any romantic soul. The world music hybrid weaves in vocals from Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour and is noticeably percussion-heavy. The combination of various drums, such as the surdo and the talking drum, plus the initial kick-in of a deliberately slow keyboard, makes for a heroic-sounding build-up.
Beyond the instrumentals, the pulsating lyrics — “In your eyes, the light, the heat / (In your eyes) I am complete” — are performed with incredible power, phonetically simple yet universally understood. Gabriel commented on the symbolism of this track in a 1986 interview, saying he was inspired by an African tradition of composing love songs that can be interpreted either as a spiritual love for the divine or a romantic love for a significant other. Sustained by a spine-like bass and choral arrangement, “In Your Eyes” represents the transcendence of love between the physical and the metaphysical, translating an intense and devotional human experience into a definitive conclusion to the album. As the “grand facade” below burns away, “In Your Eyes” shifts it all into a final power drive over the crest of the hill.
40 years later, “So” is considered a “marriage of the artistic and commercial” for Gabriel, helping launch him into Rock & Roll Hall-of-Fame status in 2014 following his controversial departure from British prog rock band Genesis in 1975. The public questioned why he left the band while they were reaching new commercial heights, but, in the words of his topical hit “Solsbury Hill,” he “walked right out of the machinery” in order to reclaim the artistic autonomy that he felt he had lost.
Compared to fellow ex-band member Phil Collins, Gabriel makes more abstract and experimental artistic choices that blend folk and contemporary sounds commonly associated with his prog rock roots. This album’s continued allegiance to those choices creates an atmospheric immersion that remains influential to present-day artists. Taylor Swift has credited Gabriel’s work with inspiring her album “1989,” while Harry Styles covered “Sledgehammer” in 2020 after calling it “the best-mixed song ever.” As Will Hermes wrote in his 2014 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction essay about Gabriel, the artist is a prog rocker “who steered the cosmos-minded genre toward Earth” — and thus toward the mainstream music that we hear today.
“So” is a widely coveted art piece that is timeless in its composition and inspirational in its impulse to traverse boundaries. A portal between two worlds — the natural and the synthetic — listening to the album feels like a barefooted walk into the expansive clouds. No one knows the destination, but the physical and spiritual experience fulfills all of the ascent’s promises and more.
