10 Perfect Pop Albums Of The 1980s

It probably wasn't very good for Peter Gabriel's ego to see Genesis move on without him. Even though he had his fair share of arthouse hits in the '80s with songs like Solsbury Hill, seeing his old band get bigger and bigger with Phil Collins behind the mic would be enough to make you go a little mad. Peter wasn't thinking in terms of pop singles though. Every album was another piece of the puzzle that brought him to making So.

While there was no plan to make this album into a pop record, these are some of the most accessible hooks that Gabriel would ever write, having the same smarts as prog music with a little extra honey to bring it across. Along with U2 producer Daniel Lanois, every sound of this record feels like another creative risk, like bassist Tony Levin inventing his trademark funk fingers on the song Big Time and bringing in baroque pop queen Kate Bush to play the voice of reason on the song Don't Give Up.

The best songs on this album manage to marry the prog and pop under one roof though, with In Your Eyes being one of the most natural dips into world music that rock and roll has ever seen. That's not to say that this album is just a collection of bold new sounds or anything. Peter was always a songwriter before anything else, and in between every one of these odd songs, you can still hear his heart at the center of everything.