Peter Gabriel by Peter Gabriel

Peter Gabriel's third solo album, released on Charisma on 30 May 1980, is the one everybody calls Melt, after its Hipgnosis cover photograph. Steve Lillywhite produced it, with sessions at Ashcombe House and the Townhouse, and it's the record where the former Genesis frontman finally shook off the prog-rock grandeur he had helped build.

This is nervy, jagged stuff: art rock that has clearly been listening hard to post-punk and new wave, all cold rhythms, strange textures and uneasy space. Gabriel turns political, too. "Games Without Frontiers" smuggles an anti-war message onto the radio and became his joint-highest UK single, a No. 4 hit. "Biko" is a slow, burning anti-apartheid protest in memory of the murdered activist Steve Biko. It was hailed as his artistic breakthrough as a solo act, and it still sounds like a man discovering exactly how strange he's allowed to be.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.