For The Record- 10. January. 2026
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Peter Gabriel
12 min read
The article centers on Gabriel's artistic choices and career trajectory, but readers may not know the depth of his influence on music technology, world music popularization, and his departure from Genesis - context that enriches understanding of why his 'play the hits' resistance is philosophically consistent with his entire career
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Genesis (band)
19 min read
Greene's suggestion that Gabriel incorporate Genesis material into his sets requires understanding the band's complex history, the artistic tensions that led to Gabriel's departure, and how dramatically different the Phil Collins-era Genesis became - making the suggestion more complicated than it appears
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Joy Division
12 min read
The article uses New Order playing 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' as a model for balancing legacy and evolution, but the tragic story of Ian Curtis's death and how New Order formed from the ashes provides essential context for why this particular song carries such weight and why their approach to legacy is uniquely informed by grief
In 2023, I had the good fortune of seeing Peter Gabriel perform. He was touring in support of i/o, a record he promoted by releasing a track with each full moon. Honestly, a pretty clever way to go about it! It gives each song a chance to breathe, gets a steady stream of hype, etc. And for anyone who finds terms like “promotion” and “marketing” oily, this is a good (and original!) workaround. There is no “Games Without Frontiers” or “Big Time” on this record.
It was a fantastic show...For most of us… The guy seated next to me spent the entire time yelling for Gabriel to play “Shock the Monkey.” You could watch him move through the 5 stages of grief as the show progressed. Would he call it fantastic? My guess is that with the benefit of hindsight, he’d say yes. That night? I doubt it.
Gabriel isn’t exactly a prolific artist, with just a few albums of original material in the last (almost) 4 decades. Bob Pollard he ain’t.
And now there is another release. Once the lunar promo cycle is complete, will there be another tour? Time’ll tell.
As news of this latest release has rolled out, I’ve been thinking about that guy--and what he represents-- a lot lately. The “play the hits” crowd is large. He’s not alone, at any rate. I recently read an op-ed in Rolling Stone where Andy Greene made the case that Gabriel should, in essence, “play the hits.” He starts by noting that i/o didn’t really make a lot of waves outside of Gabriel’s established fan base. Anecdotally, that’s fair- we saw him in Milwaukee, and the upper tiers of Fiserv Forum were blocked off. But the lines at the merch table were also impossibly long, so…
Greene’s deeper critique is that Gabriel hasn’t promoted his work aggressively enough or taken sufficient steps to ensure his achievements are preserved (“managing his legacy”). He contrasts Gabriel with Bruce Springsteen, framing Springsteen as an exemplary model of legacy management: frequent releases, deluxe reissues, documentaries, memoirs, vault projects, and a biopic—all arriving with considerable fanfare.
There’s nothing wrong with that latter model. It clearly works for Springsteen. The problem is the assumption underneath the comparison: that preserving, expanding, and monetizing a legacy are universal artistic goals. If you accept that premise, Gabriel looks like he’s falling short. If you reject it, he
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