Peter Gabriel – Steam
Peter Gabriel’s follow-up to the Grammy award winning ‘So’ from 1986, didn’t come until 1992! That isn’t saying he did nothing in that time, he did release his soundtrack to the controversial film, The Last Temptation of Christ, from Martin Scorsese. It consisted of a lot of tribal drum music and middle eastern influence on the music. I love it for that reason. It was not very mainstream, in any way, but he decided to set himself apart from the success that the pop-oriented ‘So’ album was…
In 1992, he went back to writing pop music, but really added plenty of African influences (he is South African, after all). Very rhythmic, natural and unnatural sound, and he still managed to wrap it up in a pop sensibility.
Th first single. “Digging In The Dirt” was excellent and received plenty of MTV airplay due to the type of video it was. It was very much like his earlier award winning videos for “Sledgehammer” and “Big Time”, directed by Stephen R. Johnson.
The second single to come from his 1992 album, ‘Us’ hit the Hot 100 and eventually peaked inside the Top 40. “Steam” was also directed by Stephen R. Johnson (if it’s not broke, don’t fix it, right?). MTV, again, played it constantly, pushing radio to recognize it and radio wasn’t about to ignore Gabriel’s popularity and innovation, having learned what he was capable of in 1986.
According to Gabriel, the song is about a woman in a relationship who is highly educated, sophisticated, cultured and her man is not any of those things, but knows more about who the woman really is, than herself.
“Steam” peaked at #32 on the Hot 100.
