35 All-Time Best Genesis Songs

30. "Dancing With the Moonlit Knight"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0Spl1cOf-o From one of my favorite early Genesis albums (and favorite albums period), "Dancing With the Moonlit Knight" begins with Gabriel singing a cappella and ends with the band blasting you at full force. Even Steve Hackett has said the whole album is mad. I was listening to these divinely strange sounds in the mid-90s when grunge had fully taken hold of America, and when a friend in college asked me to borrow my headphones to hear what I was listening to, I had this track cued up. He sort of stared blankly into space, not knowing what to make of it, and then he calmly took the earpieces off. Even though Pearl Jam and Soundgarden were all the rage at the time, he turned to me and said, "This is the real alternative music."

29. "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1tFQMjc-IE This is the band's first successful single, and it's still catchy over 40 years later. Written about a groundskeeper with a severe case of Peter Pan syndrome, the rebellious lad simply doesn't want to grow up or listen to any career advice, preferring to tend to his monotonous job of mowing people's lawns. The irreverent attitude of the protagonist is something teens today can still identify with. The song was based off a surreal painting by Betty Swanwick, which also served as the album's cover, and the band actually added a lawnmower in the corner to fit the song's lyrics.

28. "The Cinema Show"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G501Ii0X0NE "The Cinema Show" is another story song, this one more musically nuanced, as it was augmented by a 12-string guitar and, perhaps taking a page from Jethro Tull, a flute solo. As for the lyrics, Romeo and Juliet are preparing for a date at the titular show with Romeo all but predicting a sexual conquest that night, but as with most of the band's lyrics in this era, things aren't always what they seem, with the chorus making oblique references to T. S. Eliot's epic poem "The Waste Land." The masterwork of the song, though, is Banks' extended keyboard solo in the finale, which segues nicely into the final song of the album, "Aisle of Plenty," a reprise of sorts of "Dancing With the Moonlit Knight," which was the first song, serving as bookends to this underrated album.

27. "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pteh5hdZlg From the band's first and only double concept album, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway was also notorious as the last Genesis album to feature Gabriel. The title track begins the story of Rael, a New York Puerto Rican who may or may not be hallucinating most of the strange images he experiences, including the titular phrase. Attempting to rescue his brother John throughout the album, Rael eventually realises he's one and the same person and is suffering from a split personality. Anthemic in sound and ambitious in scope, the album perhaps bit off more than it could chew, as it was mostly greeted with confused shrugs at the time, even from diehard fans of the band. Today it is considered a seminal classic, influencing everyone from Pink Floyd to Green Day, the latter of which created a rock opera starring someone with a split personality 30 years later with American Idiot.

26. "Counting Out Time"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXUmKw4pFdc A somewhat lesser appreciated Genesis tune, "Counting Out Time" is significant for being one of the band's first purely pop performances, even more so than the sing-along "I Know What I Like." Bolstered by a bubblegum backbeat, the song would probably get confused with The Archies' "Sugar, Sugar" if it weren't for Gabriel's brilliantly twisted lyrics about Rael coming to grips with his newfound sexuality: "Honey, get hip/It's time to unzip!"