“The Carpet Crawlers” by Genesis

"The Carpet Crawlers" comes from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Genesis' sixth studio album, and it's the scene where Rael, the record's hero, lands in a corridor carpeted in red and full of people crawling on their knees toward a wooden door. He sprints past them and through it, to a candlelit feast and, beyond that, a spiral staircase climbing out of sight. Listeners have read it as a journey of conception, or as a Gnostic parable of humanity led astray, crawling toward a promised heaven that turns out to be death and rebirth somewhere far worse.

The writing is credited to all five members, John Burns co-produced with the band, and Charisma issued it as the album's second single in April 1975. In 1999 the band re-recorded it with producer Trevor Horn, Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins sharing lead vocals, and it stands as the pair's final recording with Genesis.

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