Genesis had three sometimes overlapping eras, with career-defining and then career-turning tenures by Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett and Phil Collins. Even the lone recording with their third frontman, 1997’s Calling All Stations, couldn’t escape the shadow of the trio’s absence.
Their album opening songs reflect this diversity of approach and personality. After a pushy producer turned 1969’s From Genesis to Revelation into an orchestral-pop misfire behind their backs, the Gabriel-led early lineup began to find their prog-rock footing on 1970’s Trespass. Collins and Hackett arrived in tandem ahead of 1971’s Nursery Cryme and then helped Genesis to two of their most highly regarded albums, 1972’s Foxtrot and 1973’s Selling England by the Pound.
A pair of departures would define the second half of the decade. Gabriel left following 1974’s gold-selling The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, then Hackett exited after a pair of 1976 albums, A Trick of the Tail and Wind and Wuthering, saw Collins take over as frontman. Tellingly, they became Genesis’ first two Top 40 albums in the U.S.
READ MORE: Ranking Every Genesis Album
Genesis moved forward as a trio thereafter, beginning with 1978’s million-selling And Then There Were Three. Their next five albums were all platinum or multi-platinum sellers, topped by 1986’s six-times-platinum Invisible Touch. They sold more than four million copies of both 1983’s Genesis and 1991’s We Can’t Dance. Then Collins was replaced by Ray Wilson and Genesis fell out of the Top 40. They never released another studio project.
Gabriel and Hackett appear on six of the following 15 album-opening songs, while Collins fronted eight tracks. They left behind an intriguing and sometimes confounding legacy. Here’s a ranked look back:
No. 15. “Down and Out”
From: And Then There Were Three (1978)
A strange choice for the first song on the first LP from the slimmed-down trio of Collins, Rutherford and Tony Banks. With a crashing 5/4 rhythm that’s at odds with everything else, “Down and Out” seems to be having an internal musical argument. It doesn’t sound like the rest of the album, or any trio Genesis album. “Down and Out” was so weird that they struggled to replicate it on stage, playing the song fewer than 40 times.
No. 14. “Where the Sour Turns to Sweet”
From: Genesis to Revelation (1969)
Genesis’ experience with this song was the opposite of its title. “Where the Sour Turns to Sweet” was originally part of a hope-filled four-track demo meant to score a record deal. Decca later signed Genesis, then released two other singles and their debut LP, to little notice. “Where the Sour Turns to Sweet” was finally issued a few months later, but by then, producer Jonathan King had ruined it with clumsy, tacked-on strings.
No. 13. “Calling All Stations”
From: Calling All Stations (1997)
Genesis had replaced a frontman before, so Phil Collins’ departure 20 years later didn’t initially grind things to a halt. Much had changed in the interim, however, as the group scaled the pop charts. Replacement Ray Wilson had a languid vocal style that meshed well with the more prog-inspired moments on this LP. Unfortunately, they still craved a hit song. Without Collins’ unerring sense for radio-friendly confections, Calling All Stations (and Wilson) disappeared. He might have worked out with more consistent material.
No. 12. “Invisible Touch”
From: Invisible Touch (1986)
Old-guard fans could be forgiven for assuming that “Invisible Touch” is the moment when Genesis was swallowed whole by Collins’ concurrent solo fame. But it was actually a group-written song. “Invisible Touch” grew out of a jam around “The Last Domino,” the second segment of a long-form track in Genesis’ classic style found on Side 2 of this LP. Everyone then worked together to create an empty-calorie synth pop smash.
No. 11. “Looking for Someone”
From: Trespass (1970)
Introduced during a rugged touring schedule after Genesis’ first-album flop, “Looking for Someone” offers the first hints of what’s to come in the ’70s as Gabriel stirs a bit of R&B into their embryonic folk-prog sound. (He’d take this influence to its zenith with the solo hits “Sledgehammer,” “Big Time” and “Steam.”) It’s just Gabriel’s voice and Banks’ new organ, at first, but Genesis soon builds to a soaring band-written coda.
No. 10. “Mama”
From: Genesis (1983)
As with “Down and Out,” found earlier in our ranking of Genesis’ album opening songs, “Mama” doesn’t sound anything like the LP that follows. Unlike “Down and Out,” this is a coherent track with intrigues both musical (the gated Linn drums, Banks’ haunting ARP Quadra washes) and lyrical (there is no seedier Genesis song). Released as the lead single from Genesis, “Mama” became their highest charting U.K. single at No. 4.
No. 9. “Dance on a Volcano”
From: A Trick of the Tail (1976)
Genesis looked around for a bit before deciding that they already had a replacement for Peter Gabriel sitting on a nearby drum stool. They might have been more tentative about moving forward if things hadn’t gone so well with “Dance on the Volcano.” The first song written in this new era – and, eventually, the opening song on the first-ever Genesis album with Gabriel – provides a moment of collaborative euphoria that speaks volumes about their newfound confidence.
No. 8. “Behind the Lines”
From: Duke (1980)
A highlight in a not particularly creative era, “Behind the Lines” ultimately made promises that Duke couldn’t always keep. The track started as a fragment that linked parts to create another proggy multi-suite composition. But Genesis heard something they liked and “Behind the Lines” was built out into a proper song. Unfortunately, Duke rarely rises to this level again.
No. 7. “No Son of Mine”
From: We Can’t Dance (1991)
Collins had attempted more serious themes on a chart-topping 1989 solo album, but nothing so harrowing as “No Son of Mine.” He responded with one of his most committed vocal turns in years. The emotionally charged narrative was then paired with a sound that Banks found completely by accident: His keyboard stab, dubbed “elephantus” by the band, happened as he fooled around with a sample of Rutherford on guitar. A tick-tocking cadence only adds to the blood-curdling apprehension.
No. 6. “Dancing with the Moonlit Knight”
From: Selling England by the Pound (1973)
This crescendoing Mellotron-driven epic moved from a capella reverie to brawny rock bravura, as Steve Hackett employed both his unique tapping technique and an interesting sweep-picking sound. “What I was doing was something that was akin to a violinist’s bow technique, where you are picking across the strings and then back again very quickly,” Hackett later remembered. “It was just another way of playing very, very fast. Violinists, J.S. Bach, they all would have been there first, of course.”
No. 5. “Abacab”
From: Abacab (1981)
Genesis’ best melding of new-wave and prog, “Abacab” has its feet firmly planted in both worlds. There’s no denying that punchy hook, but Genesis also exhaled long enough for a rare free-form improv turn from Banks. Sure, the lyrics are nonsense. Weed-stoked arguments about how the title may — or may not! — refer to its song structure likely continue. Even Collins once reportedly admitted that he had no idea what “Abacab” was about. Really, who does? Genesis simply carries listeners along on an utterly new-sounding exploration.
No. 4. “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway”
From: The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974)
Gabriel left after an album that remains this bundle of contradictions, mysteries, narrative twists and real-life turns. Same goes for its title track. Gabriel’s larger narrative follows a half-Puerto Rican street tough on a rescue mission for his lost sibling across a hellish New York City. Yet as complicated and full of strange imagery as this song (and the LP) could sometimes be, Genesis caught an undeniable groove. “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” helped this become the most musically approachable LP of the Gabriel era.
No. 3. “Eleventh Earl of Mar”
From: Wind and Wuthering (1976)
Hackett took a career-defining turn on “Eleventh Earl of Mar,” this engrossing retelling of an ancient Scottish uprising, just before losing his own battle for a place at Genesis’ creative table. The second post-Gabriel album arrived as disagreements between Hackett and Banks reached a high-water mark. In fact, the guitarist had already released his solo debut in an attempt to get around the four-man songwriting logjam. Nothing worked: Banks received writing credits on six of this LP’s nine songs, then Hackett was gone.
No. 2. “The Musical Box”
From: Nursery Cryme (1971)
Phil Collins and Steve Hackett arrived and Nursery Cryme promptly became Genesis’ first Top 40 U.K. hit. “The Musical Box” was originally an instrumental by the newly departed Anthony Phillips but later emerged as a soft then thunderously loud band collaboration with lyrics based on a Victorian fairy tale from Gabriel. Hackett completes the song with an eye-popping turn, updating his sound through the use of a new fretboard technique – now simply known as “tapping” – that Eddie Van Halen later took to a broad audience.
No. 1. “Watcher of the Skies”
From: Foxtrot (1972)
“Watcher of the Skies” heralded a series of ever-lengthening collaborative breakthroughs and Genesis’ first great album. They finally found a way to balance the whimsy of the group’s earliest music, their quickly developing flair for long-form narratives and a newly discovered rock brawn – setting a template for a sequence of Genesis’ ’70s-era triumphs. Hackett’s guitar, often a centerpiece during his 1971-77 tenure, is deftly complemented here by Banks’ distinctive turns on the Mellotron.
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