Sledgehammer
What can one say about Peter Gabriel? He is the god of randomness, the king of unnecessary, the president of "Why not?" Eventually I also want to cover his other video that I like, called Big Time. But this just has more stuff in it that I can talk about. So, without further ado, Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer.
The Song
The song is about having rough sex. It isn't particularly obvious on your first listening, but that is what the song is about. I don't mind, I don't really like the song that much, I like the instrumentals on it. The flute thing sounds cool and the drums and the brass just accent Gabriel's voice well. During the 80's, synthesized music was everything. Now, it's a little overdone, and I'm glad that this has instrumentals like it does.
I enjoy the symbolism in this. In modern music we keep hearing the same song over and over again. That song is either about being in love because of music, or having sex while music is playing. Sledgehammer kinda' falls into these two categories, but because the lyrics are describing trains, bumper cars and fruitcakes I'm less inclined to discard it with all the other songs about this topic.
The Video
Holy crap... I was absolutely blown away by this on my first viewing. I mean... this must have taken forever to make!
The 1st thing I notice is that this is stop-motion. That in itself seems like a massive undertaking, because it requires filming the artist singing the song and then matching the lip positions. Then I saw the spinning horn and I knew this was going to be good. Then we got the roller coaster chalkboard thing with the hair gel going everywhere, and the rest is the most random thing ever.
Unlike other songs, such as Radioactive by Imagine Dragons, the utterly random visuals actually make sense with the song lyrics. When he's singing about trains, a train materializes around his head. Yes, it's fluffy random, but it makes sense with the lyrics. "You can have a steam train," poof, steam train... in space... but steam train! There is method to his madness, and I really really like the madness.
9/10
The song is about having rough sex. It isn't particularly obvious on your first listening, but that is what the song is about. I don't mind, I don't really like the song that much, I like the instrumentals on it. The flute thing sounds cool and the drums and the brass just accent Gabriel's voice well. During the 80's, synthesized music was everything. Now, it's a little overdone, and I'm glad that this has instrumentals like it does.
I enjoy the symbolism in this. In modern music we keep hearing the same song over and over again. That song is either about being in love because of music, or having sex while music is playing. Sledgehammer kinda' falls into these two categories, but because the lyrics are describing trains, bumper cars and fruitcakes I'm less inclined to discard it with all the other songs about this topic.
The Video
Holy crap... I was absolutely blown away by this on my first viewing. I mean... this must have taken forever to make!
The 1st thing I notice is that this is stop-motion. That in itself seems like a massive undertaking, because it requires filming the artist singing the song and then matching the lip positions. Then I saw the spinning horn and I knew this was going to be good. Then we got the roller coaster chalkboard thing with the hair gel going everywhere, and the rest is the most random thing ever.
Unlike other songs, such as Radioactive by Imagine Dragons, the utterly random visuals actually make sense with the song lyrics. When he's singing about trains, a train materializes around his head. Yes, it's fluffy random, but it makes sense with the lyrics. "You can have a steam train," poof, steam train... in space... but steam train! There is method to his madness, and I really really like the madness.
9/10