History Music / PeterGabriel1980

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/3_melt.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''Whistling tunes, we hide in the dunes by the seaside''\\
''Whistling tunes, we piss on the goons in the jungle''\\
''It's a knockout!'']]

''Peter Gabriel'', also known by its FanNickname ''Melt'', is the third album by the English ProgressiveRock musician [[Music/PeterGabriel of the same name]]. It was released through Creator/CharismaRecords in the United Kingdom, and Creator/MercuryRecords in the United States, on 30 May 1980. It would later be re-issued in the US by Creator/GeffenRecords in 1983.

This third SelfTitledAlbum marks [[NewSoundAlbum a radical departure in sound, style, and tone]] from not only Gabriel's previous output, but the direction of western popular music as a whole, combining elements of progressive rock, art rock, PostPunk, NewWaveMusic, and WorldMusic in a radically unique manner. In hindsight, the combination was an inevitable one: the practice of mixing western and nonwestern musical styles had been in place since at least the exotica boom of the late 50's, and Music/TheBeatles particularly brought it to prominence in white rock with the use of sitar in songs like [[Music/RubberSoul "Norwegian Wood"]] and [[Music/RevolverBeatlesAlbum "Tomorrow Never Knows"]]. However, most invocations of this approach were generally regarded by critics and audiences as novelties at best and misguided experiments at worst. Gabriel, meanwhile, was the first act to prove to western listeners that this combination of sounds was more than just a novelty and that it could make artistically compelling music on par with that of already-established western giants, consequently thrusting what would later be known as "worldbeat" into the mainstream.

In the leadup to the album's release, Gabriel had developed an interest in music from sub-Saharan Africa and in new forms of technology that were becoming available to musicians, primarily drum machines and digital samplers like the Fairlight CMI. At the same time, Gabriel found himself still struggling to adequately separate himself from his past as the former frontman of Music/{{Genesis}}, with his first two records being closer to continuations of his material with the band than a genuine means of breaking apart as a solo act. Consequently, Gabriel took a far darker, more experimental approach to his third album, crafting an aggressive, cavernous sound with heavy emphasis on percussion. To better consolidate this drastic shift, Gabriel enlisted the help of producer Steve Lillywhite, by then already a known name in the post-punk scene for his work with Music/SiouxsieAndTheBanshees and the first incarnation of Music/{{Ultravox}}. Melding Siouxsie's Gothic atmosphere with Ultravox's leftfield style and Gabriel's knack for general strangeness, Lillywhite worked closely with Gabriel and a large bevy of session musicians, including fellow Genesis alum Music/PhilCollins and young art pop innovator Music/KateBush, to bring together an album that was both abrasively dense and forebodingly hollow.

While Gabriel's UK label Charisma didn't raise much of a fuss, the resultant album was the subject of heavy skepticism from Gabriel's US label, Creator/AtlanticRecords, who were turned off by its heavily experimental sound and misinterpreted its lyrical themes of mental decay as the product of a CreatorBreakdown, specifically singling out "Lead a Normal Life", ultimately dropping Gabriel at the recommendation of A&R executive John Kalodner. Incensed, Gabriel quickly signed onto Creator/MercuryRecords to distribute the album in America, and let the album do the rest: it shot up to the top of the UK Albums Charts, peaked at No. 22 on the Billboard 200, his highest chart placement at that date, and was certified gold by the BPI just ''three days'' after its release (later being certified gold in France and the U.S. as well), overall acting as Gabriel's BreakthroughHit as a solo artist in the UK. Additionally, lead single "Games Without Frontiers" peaked at No. 4 on the UK Singles chart and became the 54th best-selling single of the year in Britain. The song reached a respectable No. 48 on the Billboard Hot 100, but was popular on American rock radio. Billboard wouldn't develop a chart to measure airplay on AOR stations until the following year. Egg on his face, Kalodner, now working for the fledgling Creator/GeffenRecords, quickly rushed to make amends with Gabriel by signing him on in the US and Canada for 1982's ''[[Music/PeterGabriel1982 Security]]'' and reissuing the album once Mercury's ownership rights lapsed in 1983; Gabriel would remain on Geffen in North America all the way until 2008.

In addition to its commercial success, ''Melt'' was rapturously received by critics as well, who praised its adept blend of widely disparate sounds and styles and considered it the definitive sign of Gabriel having finally come into his own as an artist, proving he could make innovative and compelling music both distinct from and outside of Genesis. To this day, it ranks among ''Security'' and ''Music/{{So}}'' as one of Gabriel's best albums by fans and critics alike, with some going as far as calling it his absolute greatest, and universal consensus both in its own time and in the decades since is that it immediately established Gabriel as one of popular music's most ambitious and innovative solo artists since Music/DavidBowie. Alongside Music/TalkingHeads' ''Music/RemainInLight'' later in 1980, this album would instigate a major series of shifts in popular music, making it far more open to influences from non-western music and sparking the worldbeat boom that would reach its peak with ''So'' and Music/PaulSimon's ''Music/{{Graceland}}'' in 1986. Furthermore, while it has its audible predecessors, the opening track "Intruder" is also generally cited as the song that first birthed the gated reverb drum sound that would become omnipresent in popular music for the next 11 years; tellingly, the drummer on that song was Phil Collins, who would bring gated reverb directly into the mainstream with his own [[Music/FaceValue "In The Air Tonight"]] in 1981. As of 2020, the album sits at No. 649 on ''WebSite/AcclaimedMusic''[='s=] [[UsefulNotes/AcclaimedMusicAllTimeTopAlbums list of the most critically praised albums of all time]].

Most significantly, the album's closing track and third single "Biko" would be credited with sparking western interest in the anti-[[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra apartheid]] movement, raising awareness of the killing of UsefulNotes/{{South Africa}}n black activist Steve Biko by white police officers while in custody, and consequently bringing to the mainstream forefront the true face of apartheid brutality. The song would be cited as a direct source of inspiration by countless anti-apartheid activists in the west, and Gabriel himself would become a prominent figure in the movement.

''Melt'' was supported by four singles: "Games Without Frontiers", "No Self Control", "Biko", and "I Don't Remember."

!!Tracklist:
[[AC:Side One]]
# "Intruder" (4:54)
# "No Self Control" (3:55)
# "The Start" (1:21)
# "I Don't Remember" (4:42)
# "Family Snapshot" (4:28)
# "And Through the Wire" (5:00)

[[AC:Side Two]]
# "Games Without Frontiers" (4:06)
# "Not One of Us" (5:22)
# "Lead a Normal Life" (4:14)
# "Biko" (7:32)

!! ''I trope into the light'':
* AllLowercaseLetters: Like Gabriel's other three SelfTitledAlbum[=s=], the logotype for ''Melt'' is written this way.
* ArtisticLicenseHistory: Arthur Bremer shot Wallace during a rally at the Laurel Shopping Center in Maryland, not at a motorcade as "Family Snapshot" describes; there were also no other governors present aside from Wallace himself. Gabriel incorporated the motorcade imagery from the assassination of UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy, which was more familiar to a worldwide audience.
* AttentionWhore: True to the real Arthur Bremer's motivation, the narrator of "Family Snapshot" openly states that his assassination attempt is a ploy for immediate attention.
* AudienceParticipationSong: The wordless chanting in "Biko", accentuated by the music video for the 1987 live version, in which Gabriel dedicates each round of chanting to the victims of apartheid.
* BookEnds:
** "Biko" opens with a sample of Steve Biko's funeral procession, specifically the crowd of mourners singing "Ngomhla sibuyayo", and features another sample of the same crowd singing "Senzeni Na?" just before the gunfire-esque drumbeats that close the song. On the single release, the closing sample is replaced with a recording of "Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika" (which by coincidence would later become the South African national anthem following the abolition of apartheid), with excerpts of the song both opening and closing "Biko" on the German-language version of ''Melt''.
** The booming sound of the drums that close out "Biko" also recall the gated drums that open "Intruder" at the start of the album.
* {{Bowdlerise}}: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95SWMqzM_Sg The music video]] for "Games Without Frontiers" had to be considerably edited when it aired on Creator/TheBBC, removing scenes of Gabriel whistling among a group of children role-playing as classical European diplomats and Gabriel whistling while crawling against a backdrop of wind-up toy babies due to the higher-ups at the network deeming them obscene[[note]]nothing legitimately obscene actually occurs in the uncensored video; Gabriel would later quip in an interview that "[the BBC has] perhaps a more fertile imagination than I have"[[/note]]. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xZmlUV8muY The censored version]] instead replaces these scenes with elaborate sequences of people moving in various patterns and additional sports stock footage; to this day the BBC cut remains the only one officially available through Gabriel's WebSite/YouTube channel.
* CarefulWithThatAxe: "I Don't Remember" opens with Gabriel screaming his head off.
* ConceptAlbum: The album was described by Gabriel in an interview as "the history of a decaying mind." While the description was meant to be joking, themes of insanity and amnesia feature heavily throughout the album.
* DarkerAndEdgier: Far, ''far'' darker than anything Gabriel put out before, with an aggressively haunting musical landscape and lyrics about mental and social decay (to the point where his record company mistakenly thought he was undergoing a CreatorBreakdown). This even extends to the cover art, which features a good amount of FacialHorror that directly contrasts the comparatively tame artwork for ''[[Music/PeterGabriel1977 Car]]'' and ''[[Music/PeterGabriel1978 Scratch]]''. As for specific songs, "And Through the Wire" is probably the closest Gabriel ever came to recording a metal song, while "Intruder" is one of the darkest, most oppressive songs in his catalogue.
* DeliberatelyMonochrome: The album cover, an intentionally ruined Polaroid re-photographed on black and white film.
* DesignStudentsOrgasm: The album cover is a collaboration between Gabriel and Creator/{{Hipgnosis}}, in which they used styluses to move the dyes around in various Polaroids while they developed as a way of altering the image. The ones that Gabriel liked the best were then re-photographed with black and white film and used as the album art.
* EpicRocking: The 7:32 "Biko". The single release actually features the song uncut (resulting in 7" copies needing to be played at 33 1/3 RPM like an LP rather than the typical 45 RPM), allowing its mournful dirge to remain un-tampered across formats and heightening the power of its length.
* EverythingIsAnInstrument: While not present to the same extent as its omnipresence on ''[[Music/PeterGabriel1982 Security]]'', ''Melt'' sees Gabriel start to experiment with the trope thanks to his excitement about the potential held by the Fairlight CMI following a visit from inventor Peter Vogel. Among others, "Intruder" features the sound of a glass cutter as part of the instrumental track (tying into the lyrics about burglary), and recordings of breaking bottles and bricks appear here and there as percussive trimming. In 1996, Stephen Paine, who was also present at Vogel's visit, recounted Gabriel's enthusiasm about the CMI and its implications for this trope as follows:
-->"The idea of recording a sound into solid-state memory and having real-time pitch control over it appeared incredibly exciting. Until that time everything that captured sound had been tape-based. The Fairlight CMI was like a much more reliable and versatile digital Mellotron. Gabriel was completely thrilled, and instantly put the machine to use during the week that Peter Vogel stayed at his house."
* FaceOnTheCover: As with Gabriel's previous two albums, ''Melt'' adorns itself with an edited picture of Gabriel, via a manipulated Polaroid re-photographed on monochrome film.
* FacialHorror: The cover art depicts half of Gabriel's face melted into an indistinct waterfall of ooze, the other half already starting to melt. This was accomplished by manipulating a photo of Gabriel from a Polaroid SX-70 instant film camera.
* ForeignCultureFetish: The album's WorldMusic influences were the result of Gabriel developing a heavy interest in African cultures.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: Phil Collins' drum solo during the bridge of "No Self Control" is like a test run for the one he'd use for [[Music/FaceValue "In the Air Tonight"]] a year later; the sound was developed during the sessions for this album, and Collins liked it enough to bring over to his own solo debut.
* FreudianExcuse: "Family Snapshot" ends with a flashback to Arthur Bremer's troubled childhood, specifically the acrimonious separation of his parents, signaling it as a direct factor in Bremer's later decision to shoot George Wallace for clout.
* GratuitousFrench: Music/KateBush's part in "Games Without Frontiers" consists solely of her singing the title in French ''ad infinitum'', though it is frequently misheard; even native French speakers have reported difficulty understanding her pronunciation.
* GratuitousGerman: Gabriel re-recorded the entire album in very broken German as ''Ein Deutsches Album'', later doing the same with ''Security''. While the incredibly bad grammar is a source of amusement for German audiences, among listeners who don't speak a lick of the language, the inability to understand anything being said is considered to add to the songs' appeal rather than subtract from them.
* GratuitousPanning: The guitar riffs that open and run throughout "No Self Control" jump between the left and right audio channels.
* GriefSong: "Biko", a dirge lamenting the death of the eponymous anti-apartheid activist.
* IHaveManyNames: Like Gabriel's first, second, and fourth albums, this one is officially a SelfTitledAlbum. In the United States, it was released as ''Peter Gabriel III'', on Creator/GeffenRecords' CD release it was simply known as ''Peter Gabriel'', the 2002 remasters retitle it to just ''3'', and as of 2015, the FanNickname ''Melt'' is considered AscendedFanon by Gabriel.
* ImportantHaircut: In the first few years after leaving Genesis, already known for partially shaving his head while in the band, he often wore his hair close-cropped, sometimes shaving his head completely. ''Melt'' shows this the most clearly, with shorter hair on the cover after the first two showed him with SeventiesHair, signifying his belief that he'd found himself artistically.
* {{Instrumentals}}: "The Start".
* InTheStyleOf: "Family Snapshot" is structured, both musically and lyrically, as if it jumped out of a Broadway musical, which makes it [[LyricalDissonance incredibly jarring]] when juxtaposing it with its subject matter about assassinating a governor for clout.
* LargeHam: While he toned himself down after leaving Music/{{Genesis}}, Gabriel still tends to let loose at multiple points on the album.
* LastChorusSlowDown: Done to chilling effect in "Family Snapshot" as a lead-in to Arthur Bremer's FreudianExcuse.
* LastNoteNightmare: "I Don't Remember" ends with a low synthesizer drone, while "Biko"-- and by extent, the album-- ends with two echoing drumbeats that invoke the sound of gunfire; a common interpretation of the latter is that it represents the white South African government's violent oppression against the anti-apartheid movement, especially with how it abruptly cuts off a sample of Steve Biko's funeral procession singing "Senzeni Na?"
* LeftHanging: "Family Snapshot" cuts off the main narrative right after Arthur Bremmer pulls the trigger, instead shifting to a flashback to his traumatic childhood for the outro while leaving the aftermath of his assassination attempt up to the listener's imagination (considering that the attack was still in recent memory at the time, actually explaining what happens after the bullet fires might've been considered unnecessary).
* LimitedLyricsSong: "Lead a Normal Life", whose full lyrics are as follows:
-->''It's nice here with a view of the trees\\
Eating with a spoon?\\
They don't give you knives?\\
'Spect you watch those trees\\
Blowing in the breeze\\
We want to see you lead a normal life''
* ListSong: "Games Without Frontiers" primarily consists of Gabriel listing phrases that could describe both children's games and warfare, with the juxtaposition intended to highlight the childish absurdity of war.
* LongestSongGoesLast: The closing track, "Biko", outpaces every other song on the album at 7 and a half minutes.
* LoudnessWar: Averted with the 2002 remaster; like Gabriel's other self-titled albums and ''Music/{{So}}'', the remaster of ''Melt'' clocks in at an average dynamic range of 11.
* LyricalDissonance: "Family Snapshot", a mostly triumphant-sounding song about the shooting of Alabama governor George Wallace; given that the song's narrated from the perspective of his attempted assassin, it's likely an InvokedTrope.
* MetalScream: "I Don't Remember" opens with a fairly impressive one that rapidly approaches CarefulWithThatAxe territory.
* NewSoundAlbum: ''Melt'' marks a shift to a dense blend of ProgressiveRock, PostPunk, NewWaveMusic, and African-inspired WorldMusic that would inform the direction of Gabriel's following work and the rest of popular music as a whole in the ensuing decades.
* NightmareFuel: Done in-universe with "Biko", where during the second verse the narrator describes how he was so thoroughly traumatized by the titular activist's murder that he "can only dream in red."
* NonAppearingTitle: "Family Snapshot"
* NumberedSequels: In the vein of ''Scratch'' before it, ''Melt'' was initially released in the US as ''Peter Gabriel III''.
* OneManSong: "Biko"
* OneWordTitle: "Intruder", "Biko"; played with in regards to "The Start", which is known as just "Start" on some releases. ''Melt'' is also a single word, albeit the product of a popular FanNickname.
* ProtestSong:
** "Biko" is probably one of the most successful examples of all time, given that it directly contributed to the end of UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra in UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica by singlehandedly kicking off western interest in the anti-apartheid movement.
** "Games Without Frontiers" uses a popular game show as a roundabout metaphor for [[WarisHell the absurdity and futility of war]].
** "Not One of Us" is a more vague one, attacking general tribalism and exclusionary rhetoric rather than anything as specific as apartheid.
* RealLifeWritesThePlot:
** "Family Snapshot" was directly inspired by ''An Assassin's Diary'', a memoir by Arthur Bremer that detailed his motives for shooting infamous pro-segregation Alabama governor George Wallace, an attack that both permanently rendered the politician paraplegic and led to him renouncing his white supremacist views.
** "Biko" was famously inspired by the death of Steve Biko, a black anti-apartheid activist who was beaten to death by white police officers while in their custody.
* SanitySlippageSong: ''Melt'' can be thought of as a Sanity Slippage '''Album''' with its heavy lyrical dedication to themes of mental decline. "No Self Control", "I Don't Remember", and "Lead a Normal Life" particularly stand out in this regard, and the latter was actually mistaken by Creator/AtlanticRecords executives as a CreatorBreakdown song (which contributed to the label's decision to drop him).
* {{Scatting}}: Gabriel indulges in this throughout "I Don't Remember".
* SelfTitledAlbum: The third in the ''Peter Gabriel'' series, with fans referring to it as ''Melt'' based on its cover art.
* ShoutOut:
** "I Don't Remember" opens with Peter Gabriel pulling a MetalScream that is very clearly a nod to the SignatureRoar of Franchise/{{Tarzan}}. The {{scatting}} Gabriel performs is also a noticeable nod to Music/DavidByrne's singing style; Gabriel was a known FandomVIP of Music/TalkingHeads, which Byrne was the frontman of at the time. Fittingly, Byrne would cover "I Don't Remember" for ''And I'll Scratch Yours'', a 2013 tribute album organized by Gabriel as a companion piece to his 2010 CoverAlbum ''Scratch My Back''.
** "Games Without Frontiers" was named after the Europe-wide game show also named ''Jeux sans Frontières''; the British spin-off is ''It's a Knockout'', which Gabriel also sings several times in the song.
* SopranoAndGravel: Music/KateBush's airy vocals on "No Self Control" and "Games Without Frontiers" contrast Gabriel's deeper, huskier voice.
* SpecialGuest: Oh boy, where to begin?
** Music/PhilCollins, Gabriel's former bandmate in Music/{{Genesis}}, performs drums on "Intruder", "No Self Control", "Family Snapshot", and "Biko".
** Music/KateBush provides backing vocals on "No Self Control" and "Games Without Frontiers".
** Paul Weller of Music/TheJam plays guitar on "And Through the Wire".
** Music/KingCrimson leader Robert Fripp plays guitar on "No Self Control", "I Don't Remember", and "Not One of Us".
** Future Music/KingCrimson bassist Tony Levin provides Chapman stick parts on "I Don't Remember". Fripp and Levin have an association with Gabriel that stretches back to his debut album.
** David Gregory of Music/{{XTC}} plays guitar on "I Don't Remember" and "Family Snapshot".
* SplashOfColor: Most releases of the album include Gabriel's name written in the corner in yellow lettering, contrasting the otherwise DeliberatelyMonochrome cover art.
* StudioChatter: Opens "Not One of Us".
* TextlessAlbumCover: Later reissues have omitted the logo, in keeping with reissues of the rest of Gabriel's back catalog.
* TitleOnlyChorus: "No Self Control", "Not One of Us".
* TragicVillain: "Family Snapshot", narrated from the perspective of would-be George Wallace assassin Arthur Bremer, ends with a flashback to his unhappy childhood.
* UnbuiltTrope: Despite being the first song to use gated reverb as we know it, "Intruder" is far different in how it makes use of that sound. It's not meant to accentuate the beats and make the song more danceable, but rather do the exact opposite: it's incredibly foreboding, with its cavernously gunshot-esque booms adding to the dread that permeates the song both musically and lyrically.
* UncommonTime: The verses of "And Through the Wire" are in 7/4.
* UnconventionalFormatting: The reason that the percussion parts on this album are so striking. Gabriel forbade his drummers from using cymbals when recording the album, a standard he'd follow in most of his later work (barring a cymbal intro on [[Music/{{So}} "Red Rain"]]).
* VillainProtagonist: "Intruder" and "Family Snapshot" are respectively narrated by an experienced burglar and assassin Arthur Bremer.
* WarIsHell: The central subject of "Games Without Frontiers", where Gabriel describes war like a series of children's games to point out how utterly absurd and pointless something as violent and grueling as war is.
* WorldMusic: Alongside Music/TalkingHeads' ''Music/RemainInLight'' five months later, ''Melt'' is credited with making popular music more open to non-western musical influences.
* YouCannotKillAnIdea: "Biko":
-->''You can blow out a candle\\
But you can't blow out a fire\\
Once the flames begin to catch\\
The wind will blow it higher''
----

This third SelfTitledAlbum marks [[NewSoundAlbum a radical departure in sound, style, and tone]] from not only Gabriel's previous output, but the direction of western popular music as a whole, combining elements of progressive rock, art rock, PostPunk, NewWaveMusic, and WorldMusic in a radically unique manner. In hindsight, the combination was an inevitable one: the practice of mixing western and nonwestern musical styles had been in place since at least the exotica boom of the late 50's, and Music/TheBeatles particularly brought it to prominence in white rock with the use of sitar in songs like [[Music/RubberSoul "Norwegian Wood"]] and [[Music/{{Revolver}} "Tomorrow Never Knows"]]. However, most invocations of this approach were generally regarded by critics and audiences as novelties at best and misguided experiments at worst. Gabriel, meanwhile, was the first act to prove to western listeners that this combination of sounds was more than just a novelty and that it could make artistically compelling music on par with that of already-established western giants, consequently thrusting what would later be known as "worldbeat" into the mainstream.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Phil Collins' drum solo during the bridge of "No Self Control" is like a test run for the one he'd use for "In the Air Tonight" a year later.
* FreudianExcuse: "Family Snapshot" ends with a flashback to Arthur Bremer's troubled childhood, specifically the acrimonious separation of his parents, signalling it as a direct factor in Bremer's later decision to shoot George Wallace for clout.

* UnconventionalFormatting: The reason that the percussion parts on this album are so striking. Gabriel forbade his drummers from using cymbals when recording the album, a standard he'd follow in most of his later work (barring a cymbal intro on [[Music/{{So}} "Red Rain"]].

* UnconventionalFormatting: The reason that the percussion parts on this album are so striking. Gabriel forbade his drummers from using cymbals when recording the album.

In addition to its commercial success, ''Melt'' was rapturously received by critics as well, who praised its adept blend of widely disparate sounds and styles and considered it the definitive sign of Gabriel having finally come into his own as an artist, proving he could make innovative and compelling music both distinct from and outside of Genesis. To this day, it ranks among ''Security'' and ''Music/{{So}}'' as one of Gabriel's best albums by fans and critics alike, with some going as far as calling it his absolute greatest, and universal consensus both in its own time and in the decades since is that it immediately established Gabriel as one of popular music's most ambitious and innovative solo artists since Music/DavidBowie. Alongside Music/TalkingHeads' ''Music/RemainInLight'' later in 1980 (influenced by, sure enough, the aforementioned Fela Kuti), this album would instigate a major series of shifts in popular music, making it far more open to influences from non-western music and sparking the worldbeat boom that would reach its peak with ''So'' and Music/PaulSimon's ''Music/{{Graceland}}'' in 1986. Furthermore, while it has its audible predecessors, the opening track "Intruder" is also generally cited as the song that first birthed the gated reverb drum sound that would become omnipresent in popular music for the next 11 years; tellingly, the drummer on that song was Phil Collins, who would bring gated reverb directly into the mainstream with his own [[Music/FaceValue "In The Air Tonight"]] in 1981. As of 2020, the album sits at No. 649 on ''WebSite/AcclaimedMusic''[='s=] [[UsefulNotes/AcclaimedMusicAllTimeTopAlbums list of the most critically praised albums of all time]].

* {{Bowdlerise}}: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95SWMqzM_Sg The music video]] for "Games Without Frontiers" had to be considerably edited when it aired on Creator/TheBBC, removing scenes of Gabriel whistling among a group of children role-playing as late 19th/early 20th century diplomats and Gabriel whistling while crawling against a backdrop of wind-up toy babies due to the higher-ups at the network deeming them obscene (note that nothing legitimately obscene actually occurs in the uncensored video; Gabriel would later quip in an interview that "[the BBC has] perhaps a more fertile imagination than I have"). [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xZmlUV8muY The censored version]] instead replaces these scenes with elaborate sequences of people moving in various patterns and additional sports stock footage; to this day the BBC cut remains the only one officially available through Gabriel's WebSite/YouTube channel.

While Gabriel's UK label Charisma didn't raise much of a fuss, the resultant album was the subject of heavy skepticism from Gabriel's US label, Creator/AtlanticRecords, who were turned off by its heavily experimental sound and misinterpreted its lyrical themes of mental decay as the product of a CreatorBreakdown, specifically singling out "Lead a Normal Life", ultimately dropping Gabriel at the recommendation of A&R executive John Kalodner. Incensed, Gabriel quickly signed onto Creator/MercuryRecords to distribute the album in America, and let the album do the rest: it shot up to the top of the UK Albums Charts, peaked at No. 22 on the Billboard 200, his highest chart placement at that date, and was certified gold by the BPI just ''three days'' after its release (later being certified gold in France and the U.S. as well), overall acting as Gabriel's BreakthroughHit as a solo artist in the UK. Additionally, lead single "Games Without Frontiers" peaked at No. 4 on the UK Singles chart and became the 54th best-selling single of the year in Britain. The song reached a respectable No. 48 on the Billboard Hot 100, but was popular on American rock radio. Billboard wouldn't develop a chart to measure airplay on AOR stations until the following year. Egg on his face, Kalodner, now working for the fledgling Creator/GeffenRecords, quickly rushed to make amends with Gabriel by signing him on in the US and Canada for 1982's ''Music/{{Security}}'' and reissuing the album once Mercury's ownership rights lapsed in 1983; Gabriel would remain on Geffen in North America all the way until 2008.

* DarkerAndEdgier: Far, ''far'' darker than anything Gabriel put out before, with an aggressively haunting musical landscape and lyrics about mental and social decay (to the point where his record company mistakenly thought he was undergoing a CreatorBreakdown). This even extends to the cover art, which features a good amount of FacialHorror that directly contrasts the comparatively tame artwork for ''Music/{{Car}}'' and ''Music/{{Scratch}}''. As for specific songs, "And Through the Wire" is probably the closest Gabriel ever came to recording a metal song, while "Intruder" is one of the darkest, most oppressive songs in his catalogue.

* EverythingIsAnInstrument: While not present to the same extent as its omnipresence on ''Music/{{Security}}'', ''Melt'' sees Gabriel start to experiment with the trope thanks to his excitement about the potential held by the Fairlight CMI following a visit from inventor Peter Vogel. Among others, "Intruder" features the sound of a glass cutter as part of the instrumental track (tying into the lyrics about burglary), and recordings of breaking bottles and bricks appear here and there as percussive trimming. In 1996, Stephen Paine, who was also present at Vogel's visit, recounted Gabriel's enthusiasm about the CMI and its implications for this trope as follows:

[[redirect:Music/{{Melt}}]]