Song · Peter Gabriel
“The Barry Williams Show” by Peter Gabriel
From the album Up (2002)
“The Barry Williams Show” by Peter Gabriel appears on 2 radio countdowns from 2 stations in 2002. It was first released in 2002 on the album Up. Its best result is #26 (tie) on the WBER Listener Countdown 2002. In the combined RockLists rankings it is the #145 alternative song of 2002.
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"The Barry Williams Show" led the way for Up, Peter Gabriel's 2002 album, as its first single, and it's his fable about reality TV: a look at the distance between the persona on the screen and the person behind it, and at how dysfunction gets turned into a money-making show. Gabriel likened the genre to junk food, craved and then regretted, and tried out a pile of names for his host before settling on one that sounded native to TV land.
He wrote it alone and plays Mellotron, organ, keyboard bass and harmonica, with Tony Levin on bass, Manu Katché and Ged Lynch on drums and David Rhodes and Tony Berg on guitar; Tchad Blake mixed it. Critics mostly turned up their noses, but it charted across Europe and drew a Grammy nomination for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, which went to Bruce Springsteen's "The Rising".
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
All Rock Formats
Year-end countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | 37 | CD101 Columbus, OH | CD101 Top 101 Songs of 2002 | 101 |
| 2002 | 26 (tie) | WBER Rochester, NY | WBER Listener Countdown 2002 | 224 |
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