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Peter Gabriel - Lead a Normal Life

Peter Gabriel - Lead a Normal Life Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Peter Gabriel (third, melt)
Released: 1980

Lead a Normal Life Lyrics

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

Writer/s: LEON CAFFREY, PETER GABRIEL, THOMAS SCOTT
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Lead a Normal Life

This song about mental illness led to questions asking if Gabriel was suffering from the condition himself. He told Mojo magazine September 2013: "I think the assumption was, you couldn't write about something like that unless you had experience of it."

Gabriel added: "I later discovered I had depression around the time of my marriage breaking up. But maybe there was something more there (long pause). Like actors in films, they say there is always something in a role that they need to work out. But mental illness was interesting to me."

Peter Gabriel - I Don't Remember

Peter Gabriel - I Don't Remember Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Peter Gabriel (third, melt)
Released: 1980

I Don't Remember Lyrics

I got no means to show identification
I got no papers show you what I am
You'll have to take me just the way that you find me
What's gone is gone and I do not give a damn

Empty stomach, empty head
I got empty heart and empty bed
I Don't Remember
I don't remember

I don't remember, I don't recall
I got no memory of anything at all
I don't remember, I don't recall
I got no memory of anything
Anything at all

Strange is your language and I have no decoder
Why don't you make your intentions clear
With eyes to the sun and your mouth to the soda
Saying, "Tell me the truth, you got nothing to fear

Stop staring at me like a bird of prey
I'm all mixed up, I got nothing to say
I don't remember
I don't remember

I don't remember, I don't recall
I got no memory of anything at all
I don't remember, I don't recall
I got no memory of anything
Anything at all

I don't remember, I don't recall
I got no memory of anything at all
I don't remember, I don't recall
I got no memory of anything
Absolutely anything at all
I don't remember

Writer/s: GABRIEL, PETER
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

I Don't Remember Song Chart

This song is about a man with amnesia being asked a bunch of questions. Gabriel had an interest in psychiatry and explored the topic on this album. In a 1980 interview with Sounds, he called himself "a purveyor of amateur psychiatric cliches," adding, "The only way I can make it work is compare my own experience with the theories."

Robert Fripp, Dave Gregory, and David Rhodes all played guitar on this. Fripp was a member of King Crimson.

This song was heavily processed, especially at the end where the music is slowed down and distorted further over some barely-audible whispering by Gabriel. The bass and midrange were equalized out of Gabriel's vocals, giving him a tinny sound similar to a phone line.

Gabriel wrote this using a new approach. The rhythm was put in a programmable drum machine and the chords and melody built around it. Drum machines were new at the time.

Peter Gabriel - Intruder

Peter Gabriel - Intruder Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Peter Gabriel (third, melt)
Released: 1980

Intruder Lyrics

I know something about opening windows and doors
I know how to move quietly to creep across creaky wooden floors
I know where to find precious things in all your cupboards and drawers

Slipping the clippers
Slipping the clippers through the telephone wires
The sense of isolation, the sense of isoloation
Inspires me

I like to feel the suspense when I'm certain you know I am there
I like you lying awake, your baited breath charging the air
I like the touch and the smell of all the pretty dresses you wear

Intruders happy in the dark
Intruder come
Intruder come and he leave his mark, leave his mark
Leave his mark
Leave his mark
Leave his mark
Leave his mark
Leave his mark
Leave his mark

I am the intruder

Writer/s: GABRIEL, PETER
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Intruder Song Chart

This song is about a burglar who breaks into a woman's house and is never caught. Gabriel wanted the listener to feel a "sense of urgency," so he made the song intentionally creepy. He says it was one he always enjoyed performing live.

The repeating drum pattern on this song gave it a very distinctive sound and a sinister feel. The drums were played by Phil Collins, who would later use variations of this sound on the equally eerie songs "Mama" and "In The Air Tonight."

Putting the drums through a gate compression unit and adding reverb created this effect. Gabriel and Collins give different accounts as to where the idea came from. Collins has said that he built the drum track for a song he was working on called "Marguerita," which was never released. Gabriel credits the album's engineer Hugh Padgham and producer Steve Lillywhite for coming up with the processing to create the unusual sound.

At the time, Collins was taking a break from Genesis after having problems with his first marriage. Gabriel, who played with Collins in Genesis, got him to help out with drums on his third album.

Gabriel has cited the work of the filmmakers Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Hitchcock as influences on this song.

Before Phil Collins played the drums on this track, Gabriel had the cymbals and hi-hats removed from the kit. This accomplished the goal of getting Collins to come up with an unusual arrangement, but it got him a little too far out of his comfort zone, as he kept trying to hit cymbals and hi-hats that weren't there. They had to put tom-tom drums where these were so he could keep a rhythm.

Peter Gabriel - No Self Control

Peter Gabriel - No Self Control Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Peter Gabriel (third, melt)
Released: 1980

No Self Control Lyrics

Got to get some food
I'm so hungry all the time
I don't know how to stop
I don't know how to stop

Got to get some sleep
I'm so nervous in the night
I don't know how to stop
No, I don't know how to stop
I don't know how to stop
I don't know how to stop

Got to pick up the phone
I will call any number
I will talk to anyone
I know I'm gone too far
Much too far I gone this time
And I don't want to think what I've done
I don't know how to stop
No, I don't know how to stop

There are always hidden silences
Waiting behind the chair
They come out when the coast is clear
They eat anything that moves
I go shaky at the knees
Lights go out, stars come down
Like a swarm of bees

No self-control
no self-control
No self-control
No self-control
No self-control
No self-control
No self-control

You know I hate to hurt you
I hate to see your pain
But I don't know how to stop
No, I don't know how to stop

Street after street
Night after night
I walk on through the rain
I walk on through the rain
I don't know how to stop
I don't know how to stop

No, I don't know how to stop
I don't know how to stop
I don't know how to stop
I don't know how to stop

Writer/s: GABRIEL, PETER
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

No Self Control Song Chart

This was inspired by Steve Reich's album Music For 18 Musicians. A composer who studied at Juilliard, Reich experimented with electronic textures that Gabriel wanted to try in a rock format.

In an attempt to create different sounds, Gabriel did not allow cymbals on all of this album. The fast rhythm is generated by marimbas, a wooden African instrument which Gabriel used a lot in the future. Gabriel also used a programmable rhythm machine called a Paia to help create the beats. Gabriel later said that musically, this was one of his breakthrough tracks.

Phil Collins, who was taking a break from Genesis while his first marriage fell apart, played drums on this.

This was released as a single to coincide with Gabriel's third album, but it didn't chart.