We at American Songwriter have some fun from time to time, looking back at the five biggest US hits of a particular artist. As far as we can tell, in only one case did the five songs come from a single album.
Videos by American Songwriter
The band was Genesis, and the album was their 1986 blockbuster Invisible Touch. With five smash singles, the LP completed the British trio’s transformation from prog rock adventurers to pop music sure shots.
Prog to Pop
If you were to have made a list in the mid-70s or so of which rock bands you thought might eventually become pop stars, Genesis likely would have ranked near the bottom. In fact, the members of the band had initially hoped that they could write pop songs when they started. But they decided they weren’t very good at it and shifted towards artier ambitions.
The tide started to change for this long-running group once Peter Gabriel left to go off on his own. (Gabriel, ironically enough, would do quite well in the pop music world himself.) Whittled down to a trio, Genesis started to sense that the prog rock was creatively and commercially limiting. And, since Gabriel had defined that era for them, why wouldn’t they start to try new things?
Around the same time that they started to subtly turn towards a more accessible sound, lead singer Phil Collins became an unlikely solo star with his 1981 album Face Value and its brooding hit “In The Air Tonight”. It made sense for Genesis to capitalize on that. But nobody could have predicted they’d do that so effectively.
Phil’s Momentum
Genesis’ first three studio albums of the 80s all contained at least one hit single, with “That’s All” in 1983 giving them their first-ever US Top 10. In 1985, Phil Collins released the album No Jacket Required, which spun off four Top 10 hits. Not to mention a pair of extra Collins’ No. 1s, “Against All Odds” and “Separate Lives” (with Marilyn Martin), which came from movies in 1984 and 1985, respectively.
In other words, Genesis entered the making of Invisible Touch with a perfect storm of exposure. Collins had risen to the upper echelons of the music world, in terms of his commercial success, alongside heavyweights like Madonna and Prince. The next Genesis album couldn’t help but draw a ton of attention.
Genesis didn’t head into the album with any mercenary thoughts of churning out hits. In fact, they went into it with nothing at all. The band had nothing pre-written when they entered their dedicated studio, known as The Farm, in late 1985. They decided they’d simply jam their way to an album’s worth of tracks. One by one, songs started to appear that would become radio staples in less than a year’s time.
‘Touch’ and Go
The title track, which Collins claimed later was a kind of homage to Sheila E in terms of its sound, set the radio-friendly tone. Electronic drums and chirping synths, which were hallmarks of the entire album, accompanied this ode to a captivating female. It gave the band their first-ever US chart-topper.
And there was plenty more where that came from. The downcast ballads “Throwing It All Away” and “In Too Deep”, the politically charged “Land Of Confusion”, and the atmospheric “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” all landed in the Top 5.
Some fans of the band’s earlier era didn’t care much for Genesis’ turn to the world of hitmaking. But it’s impossible to deny the results. Invisible Touch turned out to be an ironic title because Genesis popped up everywhere you looked or listened in 1986.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Leave a Reply
Only members can comment. Become a member. Already a member? Log in.