1980’s music. Gabriel, Peter. Top song.

The former lead singer and founder of Genesis, Peter Gabriel had been solo since 1976/77. I’d been alerted to him in my childish way, by his 1977 single, Solsbury Hill and also 1980’s Games Without Frontiers.

By 1986 he’d had a further 5 singles – amongst them Biko, but none entered the higher reaches of the UK Singles Chart (I was unaware of Biko until I watched 1987’s Cry Freedom).

However, by 1986, MTV was becoming a powerful force, as were music videos generally, so the visual impact of Sledgehammer assisted its undoubted musical virtues to lift it to number 4 in the chart.

Backed by Don’t Break This Rhythm it was released in the w/e 26th April 1986 and soon entered the top ten. It was a perennial of the top ten throughout May and June, and I bought it on 6th June.

It is claimed that ‘the lyrics are a mosaic of sexual innuendos’. You think, but this is Peter Gabriel, he would never… and then you reason that like anyone else, he is a sexual being. Therefore, his references to references to bees, pollination, fruitcages, steam trains, big dippers, bumper cars and the like, cannot really be anything else.