So by Peter Gabriel

So, Peter Gabriel's fifth studio album and his first with an actual title, landed on 19 May 1986 on Charisma, Virgin and Geffen, and it's the sound of the art-rock outsider walking straight through the front door of the charts. The name itself was a kind of anti-title, Gabriel's wry answer to label pressure to market him properly.

It began after the Birdy soundtrack, when Daniel Lanois was invited to stay at Gabriel's Somerset home through 1985 to work on the next record. The early sessions were just Gabriel, Lanois and guitarist David Rhodes, with a growing cast of percussionists joining later. Gabriel still had the Fairlight CMI sampler humming away, but the songs come out less experimental, fusing pop, soul and art rock with African and Brazilian rhythms. "Sledgehammer" is a strutting soul stomp that puts a grin on the whole album, "In Your Eyes" builds into a soaring, joyful rush, "Red Rain" rolls in dark and stormy, and "Don't Give Up", a duet with Kate Bush, is tender and slow-burning.

The payoff was huge. So lifted Gabriel out of cult status and made him a household name, and it became his best-selling solo album, five times platinum in the US and triple platinum in Britain. "Sledgehammer" hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and its animated video won a record nine MTV Video Music Awards. The album earned a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year in 1987, losing to Paul Simon's Graceland, and Gabriel took it on the road on the This Way Up tour.

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