Genesis: "Land Of Confusion"

The video had those wikkid-looking foam puppets.

i liked the song too - i just dont care for Genesis much at all these days - i always quite liked 'Thats All' for some reason too

Perfect Genesis song from the same album = "Mama".

Laibach would have done the better version of this song. Or have they? ;-)

---How can a pop song like "Land of Confusion" be the perfect entry from a band whose worst efforts were their singles?

I never said "Land of Confusion" was the perfect Genesis song. I said that "Land of Confusion" was a perfect song (basically, a song I can't find anything that I would change to make it better) and expressed amazement that I could still find so much love for a band that disappointed me so much (_I Can't Dance_, anyone?).

Other perfect songs Genesis have done include "Domino" and "That's All". (No, I don't know Gabriel-era Genesis.)

Lookime, I just nailed a Harvard-boy in the details!

Does no one besides me think there's a nontrivial semantic difference between "a perfect Genesis song" and "the perfect Genesis song"?

I think you meant "I find a perfect song, and it's made by Genesis", not "I found the song that is a perfect example of Genesis"

Although, bringing up that section reminds me that the guitar "solo" is really, really limp and unnecessary, but I have no idea what I'd put in its place. The song remains perfect due to a technicality!

Oh yeah, and the first level music of Gaires rocked.

In the same reason that those ten years older than us can never get Dan Fogelberg out of their head. No matter how hard they try.

Anyway, there are lots of perfect Genesis songs, and they are all from the 70s.

Also, I love that "diddley" part. Why didn't they
sound like that more often. It's almost like a Queen parody!
It's the "after the battle" part that always bugged me.
BORING!

I love that part. My favourite part of "Supper's Ready" actually. :-) A wonderful piece of highly Music Hall influenced Kitchen Sink!

"Stagnation" from Trespass

A former co-worker of mine, when told that Genesis had an album called "Nursery Cryme", said Nursery Cryme!? That's what Gary Glitter was arrested for, wasn't it?"

Nursery Cryme would have been a great bad hip hop album title.

A former co-worker of mine, when told that Genesis had an album called "Nursery Cryme", said Nursery Cryme!? That's what Gary Glitter was arrested for, wasn't it?"

ILM needs a "like" button. :)

for some reason listening to that Disturbed abomination made me think a reunited Faith No More could do an awesome cover of this song.

It's a bit late for that now... aren't the reunited Faith No More, er... "no more"?

There's a Yummy Fur song with the lyric" "There's no 'Y' in the crime, he's from the nursery maybe"

I think I love this song.

and if you don't OUR GENERATION WILL PUT IT RIGHT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t65NQg6iXDw&ob=av2e

The chorus works well dropped in the middle of Diana-Ross-inspired Swedish disco-pop.

this song kicks ass all over the place

It is about as "political" as "We Are The World" and "Heal The World", I guess...

I must've dreamed a thousand dreams
Been haunted by a million screams
But I can hear the marching feet
They're moving into the street.

Now did you read the news today
They say the danger's gone away
But I can see the fire's still alight
There burning into the night.

There's too many men
Too many people
Making too many problems
And not much love to go round
Can't you see
This is a land of confusion.

This is the world we live in
And these are the hands we're given
Use them and let's start trying
To make it a place worth living in.

Ooh Superman where are you now
When everything's gone wrong somehow
The men of steel, the men of power
Are losing control by the hour.

This is the time
This is the place
So we look for the future
But there's not much love to go round
Tell me why, this is a land of confusion.

This is the world we live in
And these are the hands we're given
Use them and let's start trying
To make it a place worth living in.

I remember long ago -
Ooh when the sun was shining
Yes and the stars were bright
All through the night
And the sound of your laughter
As I held you tight
So long ago -

I won't be coming home tonight
My generation will put it right
We're not just making promises
That we know, we'll never keep.

Too many men
There's too many people
Making too many problems
And not much love to go round
Can't you see
This is a land of confusion.

Now this is the world we live in
And these are the hands we're given
Use them and let's start trying
To make it a place worth fighting for.

This is the world we live in
And these are the names we're given
Stand up and let's start showing
Just where our lives are going to.

so, more than twenty years later, where are we? Has Genesis' generation put it right? Or did they make promises they had no intention of keeping?

That Alcazar video feels like a 30 Rock cutaway to one of Jenna Maroney's musical exploits.

aw

This song is all about creating the *feel* of dread and paranoia -- there's absolutely nothing in the lyrics that suggests they're anything more than a front for Phil's singing.

Which is awesome.

this and domino are the only songs on this album I can stand to hear these days.

"Domino" is all time

Eh, I still like most of this album. I think I was just young enough at the time to enjoy, not rue, its ubiquity.

One of my favorite memories of recent years - it's weird when you get old enough that you sort of stop making "memories," because they have less distance to travel - was going to some thrift store in NYC. "Throwing It All Away" came on over the store PA, softly, and I saw not one, not two, but three very different sorts of people quietly singing along as they browsed. It was like that scene in "Magnolia."

that's awesome

which one, there were like 400 of them

I had a similar moment about four years ago over the holiday break when some buddies and I mentioned Genesis and four of us started going "Oh-oh-oh-oh. AH. Oh-oh-oh-oh. AH. THROWING IT ALL AWAY."

There's a weird 10 minutes or so on 'We Can't Dance' where Phil sings lyrics he wrote about "why is the world a bad place" and then immediately afterwards sings one of Mike's that's all "the world's not fair cos it just is and that".

"Land of Confusion" is a rock song written by the band Genesis for their 1986 album Invisible Touch. The song was the third track on the album and was the fourth track from the album to become a single, which reached #4 in the US[1] and #14 in the UK in early 1987. It made #8 in the Netherlands. The music was written by the band, while the lyrics were written by guitarist Mi

ke Rutherford.

"Land of Confusion" was the third single! (Invisible Touch, Throwing It All Away, Land of Confusion, Tonight Tonight Tonight, In Too Deep)

oh actually swap the last too, misremembered the order

Yeah, I remember it as the third single too.

but "In Too Deep" was def the last in the US.

ah clarity:

"In Too Deep" was released in January 1987 but didn't become a US hit until AFTER "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" which was released in March 1987 on the heels of that omnipresent Michelob ad campaign

When I saw that last Genesis tour, which was pretty good, all the dudes left for beer during the ballads, and all the girls left for beer during the long proggier songs.

I feel very emotionally attached to this album and song (and "Tonight Tonight Tonight" too).

I unreservedly love this whole album

I don't really like the title track that much.

I'm trying to imagine Kenny G covering "The Brazilian."

Either:

A) You don't sing into drumsticks on a regular basis

or

B) You don't pronounce the word "in-viz-EE-buhl"

Let's discuss:

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3p1sW9aIQ-Y/0.jpg

sorry but the top 3 songs on this album are

1. "Domino" (last great bombastic Genesis freakout)
2. "The Brazilian"
3. title track

I dunno -- Hugh Padgham puts a whole lotta bombastic freakouts on this record. None more bombastic than this song.

That said, I think I need to hear Domino again -- despite lots of ILM love, it didn't grab me last time.

The Brazilian is prob one of all time fave genesis songs tbh

It's true that it's sort of one of the best mega '80s instrumentals, a la Axel F or the Miami Vice theme or what have you. I mean that as a compliment. Extended Tonight, Tonight, Tonight is awesome, too, even if all you know of it is the beer commercial edit.

That Alcazar video made my brain melt. It doesn't help that they have the name of an evil wizard!

...have just realised it wasnt the Brazillian I was thinking of (tho I do love that song), it was "Do the Neurotic" which is a bside of... Invisible touch or something I think?

..or actually the Land of Confusion bside, I think! just to be relevant to topic ha.

holy shit, I was a pretty big fan of this album back in the days when my parents would pay for maybe two albums a year for me and I just now saw the family. I had a few theories about what those shadows were. Fuck audiocassettes for shrinking our album covers I guess.

The woman and the girl are smaller than the man and the boy - is this sexist?

One theory was, I thought the shadows were some kind of gun and that Invisible Touch was about a female spy. Thanks to Duran Duran's A View To A Kill, I thought that most pop songs were somehow about spies.

I thought the entire album was a concept album about Phil falling in love with a succubus of some kind. I think I posted my detailed write-up of this theory somewhere on ILX.

I thought it was a reference to this?http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/de/ProtectAndSurvive.jpg/220px-ProtectAndSurvive.jpg
With the 'invisible touch' being a nuclear blast? And the song itself being a more cryptic take on OMD's 'Enola Gay'?

woah!

Just read that "tonight, tonight, tonight" is about drug addiction, which makes it every bit as obnoxious for being used in a beer commercial as recovering addict Eric Clapton's slow version of "After Midnight" was. What assholery.

Also read that the "Land of Confusion" video lost to Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" at the whatever awards. And that just as "In the Air Tonight" played during the first episode of "Miami Vice," "Land of Confusion" played during the final episode. Phil owned the '80s. They should have given him calendar royalties.

This video! I remembered Reagan & Thatchipoo as lumpen nightmares, but the Genesis bros look by far the worst in this video – the most inbred of inbred descendants of all the Labyrinth goblins. :/