Greetings and salutations Hivers. Today let's go into another Three Tune Tuesday post.
As always, thanks to @ablaze for making this series. Lots of people participate in it! Follow the tags to find a ton of good music recommendations.
Today I thought we'd dive into Genesis. Now if you are like me, a child of the 80s, that name probably immediately conjures images of their leadman, Phil Collins, and some pop hit that MTV played a gajillion times per day. But their history is much richer.
Like many 80s kids who loved that New Wave sound, Genesis was one of my favorite bands. As I explored them backwards I was amazed at their history and loved them even more for it. Some bands reinvent themselves. The Beatles are the best example of this, changing from a simple boy band singing simple lovy-dovey tunes to leaders of the pop movement, with much more imaginative and creative songs. Genesis however didn't just reinvent themselves, they metamorphosed.
They started as a group of English schoolboys writing art rock epics about foxes and apocalyptic lambs. They ended up headlining stadiums, racking up pop hits, and becoming a household name — thanks in no small part to one very busy drummer-turned-frontman who doesn't even need to be named, as he became one of the most popular singers of the 80s.
I thought I’d take a walk through Genesis’s transformation by picking one song from each of their major phases. It’s not meant to be a “best of” list — that would take far more than three simple picks — more like a time-lapse of one of the strangest and most successful identity shifts in rock history.
The Carpet Crawlers
The band formed in 1967 with Peter Gabriel at the helm. Future superstar Phil Collins wasn't a founding member — he didn’t join until their third album in 1971 — but he quickly became a defining presence in the band. They were mainly a prog group at the beginning, with elaborate song structures and fantasy lyrics. A far cry from what they would later morph into.
The Carpet Crawlers is from Peter Gabriel’s swan song final album with the group, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. This track is pure atmosphere—soft synths, murmured lyrics about strange rituals and locked doors, and Gabriel’s voice at its most tender. It’s also one of the few songs from the Gabriel era that Genesis continued to play live after he left, and for good reason — it’s haunting, melodic, and oddly timeless.
Ripples
When Gabriel left, fans thought Genesis might collapse. Instead, Phil Collins stepped up as lead vocalist and stunned everyone.
Ripples, from the 1976 album A Trick of the Tail isn’t flashy. It’s definitely not a single. But it’s gorgeous. Collins’s voice here is fragile and human, and the song builds slowly, shifting from ballad to soaring instrumental.
This was Genesis still deep in their progressive roots, but learning how to make it all a bit more listenable to a mass audience.
Invisible Touch
By the mid-’80s, Genesis were no longer the band of fox-costume fame. They were now radio kings — and MTV kings (after all, video killed the radio star). We are in their golden era now and there are oh so many hits I could pick here. I'm going to go with this one, Invisible Touch from their 1986 album of the same name.
It’s catchy, synthetic, and light-years from the English pastoral sound of their early days. But it still has the band’s tight musicianship under the hood, even if it’s surrounded by a completely different sound. Love it or hate it, it’s hard to deny: Genesis mastered the pop game.
There are so many great songs I could choose from, and I'm tempted to pick one for a bonus pick, but we'll leave it with these three.
From fog machines and face paint to Billboard charts and pop hooks, Genesis changed a lot. But at their core, they were always three insanely skilled musicians willing to evolve.
I grew up during the last phase so those pop songs hold much more nostalgic charm for me, but these days I probably gravitate more to their early prog sound. How about you? What’s your favorite Genesis phase?