1986 Songs: Sledgehammer

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And everyone says, “Wow, she does know a big hit! Yeah, I have one or two of them on this list of songs that are now 40 years old. However, if you look at what was popular that year, by and large I was not into that (I prefer George Benson’s version of “The Greatest Love of All” to the Whitney Houston version from 1986, and things like Peter Cetera…eww..). This is a notable exception: a #1 song that I dearly loved, and still do. Sledgehammer - Peter Gabriel Yeah, yeah, let’s skip what the song’s about…although you have to admit that it’s one of the more clever euphemisms for sex that made it to a song. No, let’s talk about Peter Gabriel’s great vocal on this song. That’s some super sweet blue-eyed soul. It’s not like he’d never done that before (see “Shock the Monkey”), but this time it hit at the right time. Of course, 1986 was a Genesis year. You had Phil Collins having solo hits, Genesis having band hits, and then here comes Gabriel (whose departure from Genesis pushed Collins into the lead singer role) outselling them both! (Oh, there was also the Mike + the Mechanics project out around this time as well.) Now that was some good commercially successful music. And I still love this album. Sledgehammer Written by Peter Gabriel Recorded by Peter Gabriel From So, 1986 You can have a bumper car: