“Big Time” by Peter Gabriel

"Big Time" comes from So, Peter Gabriel's fifth studio album, released in 1986, and it's a full-on funk strut: a slinky, rubbery groove, a horn section blaring, and Gabriel singing with a sly, puffed-up grin. He wrote it alone and produced it with Daniel Lanois, and they threw a crowd at it.

Stewart Copeland plays the drums, alongside drum machines from Jimmy Bralower and Gabriel himself. Tony Levin handles bass, Andy Clark adds bass synthesizer and Hammond organ, and Lanois and David Rhodes play guitar. The horns come from Wayne Jackson on trumpet and cornet, Don Mikkelsen on trombone and Mark Rivera on a whole rack of saxophones, and P.P. Arnold, Coral Gordon and Dee Lewis join Gabriel on backing vocals. Kevin Killen and Lanois engineered, with David Bascombe recording, and for all those hands the track stays punchy and tight.

It was Gabriel's second top-ten single in the US, reaching number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, and it made the top 20 in the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Belgium and Luxembourg.

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