10 Perfect Prog Rock Songs That Are Ridiculously Long

When prog rock was first starting out, you didn't necessarily need to take the genre all that seriously. For all of the strange time signatures, this was still rock and roll music, and the purpose was still to entertain you, just on a more sophisticated level. And once Genesis hit their stride with Peter Gabriel behind the mic, Supper's Ready gave us the pinnacle of the theatrical side of rock and roll.

Closing out Foxtrot, this is the kind of song that feels a lot closer to an audio play, with Gabriel taking a few cues from Revelation in the Bible and letting the rest of the song sprawl out over 23 minutes. You can really hear the kind of biblical imagery here as well, as the last few minutes of the song sound borderline apocalyptic, especially when Phil Collins picks up the tempo and Tony Banks puts his organ through absolute hell to convey the kind of destruction.

This isn't a song that's supposed to unhappy either, and you can really hear the sense of inner peace in the last few minutes, where Gabriel starts to return to the more calming voice from the beginning. That was only the studio version though, with the song coming to life whenever they played it live, with Gabriel piling on layers of makeup and acting out whichever scenes he could. Forget rock and roll...this whole thing was practically a Broadway level show that just happened to feature rock and roll instruments.