Security has its strengths, to be sure, but overall, it’s simply a more conventional piece of work-but of course it was just that sort of convention and relatable sentiment, not, ah, “creative restlessness,” that years later allowed a song like “In Your Eyes” to become such a smash. However, I recently spent a solid chunk of time listening to the English and German versions of both Melt and Security, and one of the clearest takeaways from those hours is that Melt is the superior album. I’m sure Mr Easlea is correct that Security left as a residue increased feelings of confidence in Gabriel. It demonstrated that this had been Gabriel’s masterwork to date in that he had exercised a level of control over the recording that he hadn’t been able to before, the building-up-from-the-ground approach suited him perfectly and would be the method he would use on all further recordings. It was a great achievement to remix and re-record some of the work, with different effects and vocal lines. However, while the previous album had been merely Gabriel overdubbing his vocals into German, here he went the whole hog and re-recorded and remixed huge swathes of the album, including getting Peter Hammill back in to sing backing vocals in German. In his book Without Frontiers: The Life and Music of Peter Gabriel, Daryl Easlea provides the following bit of commentary:įollowing the success of the German version of Melt that Gabriel made in 1980, he released a sister version of Security, titled as the previous release, Ein Deutsches Album. The record is largely silent on Gabriel’s motivations for undertaking this extra work-if you ask me, the most likely answer is perhaps “creative restlessness.” In Experiencing Peter Gabriel: A Listener’s Companion, Durrell Bowman mentions that in concerts around 1980, Gabriel was observed to sing a French version of a song from the 1950s (if not earlier) called “Me and My Teddy Bear.” The translations for the two Gabriel albums were were supplied by a certain Horst Königstein, a German writer and director for television and the theater. David Bowie released “ Helden,” a German version of “Heroes.” David Lee Roth put out Sonrisa Salvaje, a version of Eat ‘Em and Smile with Spanish vocal tracks. The Beatles, after all, released “Sie Liebt Dich,” a German version of “She Loves You,” and Petula Clark and Sandie Shaw had all kinds of hits on the continent.
Such multilingualism among top recording acts is not unknown, of course. For Melt, Gabriel “merely” sang the translated German lyrics over the original tracks, but for the German version of Security it seems that he actually re-recorded large chunks of the album as well. What many of his fans don’t know is that Gabriel made the decision to release German-language versions of the last two albums in that series, the ones often called “Melt” and “Security,” respectively. After his years in Genesis, Peter Gabriel released four solo albums, all of them confusingly given the title “Peter Gabriel,” that are widely recognized as post-prog/post-punk masterpieces of some stripe.
#PETER GABRIEL DISCOGRAPHY SONGS AND LYRICS SERIES#
Accompanied by a series of groundbreaking videos and the number one single "Sledgehammer," So became a multi-platinum hit, and Gabriel emerged as an international pop star. The record, as well as its two similarly titled successors, established Gabriel as a critically acclaimed cult artist, and with 1982's Security, he began to move into the mainstream "Shock the Monkey" became his first Top 40 hit, paving the way for his breakthrough So in 1986. With his eponymous debut solo album in 1977, he explored dark, cerebral territory, incorporating avant-garde, electronic, and worldbeat influences into his music. He was no less ambitious as a solo artist, but he was more subtle in his methods. As the leader of Genesis in the early '70s, Peter Gabriel helped move progressive rock to new levels of theatricality.