Up by Peter Gabriel

Up, Peter Gabriel's seventh studio album, surfaced on 23 September 2002 through Geffen and his own Real World label, ten years after Us, and it sounds like the work of a man who spent the gap thinking hard. He wrote the songs himself and produced them with Stephen Hague and Steve Osborne, at his Real World Studios in Wiltshire and at Associated Independent Recording, and the music drifts from brooding art rock to ambient hush to the world-music textures he had championed for years.

It's a dark, patient record, with "The Barry Williams Show" the rare moment that lets a pop hook in the door. Critics mostly liked it, and it climbed to 9 in America and 11 at home while going all the way to the top in Italy. The Growing Up tour followed in 2003, with his daughter Melanie on backing vocals. It would be his last album of new songs until I/O in 2023.

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