"Land of Confusion" | |||||||||||||||||
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Original single cover parodying 1963's With the Beatles
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Single by Genesis | |||||||||||||||||
from the album Invisible Touch | |||||||||||||||||
B-side | "Feeding the Fire" | ||||||||||||||||
Released | 1986 | ||||||||||||||||
Format | 7", 12", CD | ||||||||||||||||
Length | 4:45 | ||||||||||||||||
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Atlantic US Virgin UK |
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Genesis singles chronology | |||||||||||||||||
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"Land of Confusion" | ||||
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Single by Disturbed | ||||
from the album Ten Thousand Fists | ||||
Released | 2006 | |||
Format |
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Length | 4:47 | |||
Label | Reprise | |||
Writer(s) | ||||
Producer(s) | Johnny K | |||
Disturbed singles chronology | ||||
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"Land of Confusion" is a song by the English rock band Genesis from their 1986 album Invisible Touch. The song was the third track on the album and was the third track released as a single, reaching No. 4 in the U.S. and No. 14 in the UK in late 1986. It also reached No. 8 in the Netherlands. The music was written by the band, while the lyrics were written by guitarist Mike Rutherford. The song's video featured puppets from the 1980s UK sketch show Spitting Image.
The song is widely remembered for its music video, which had heavy airplay on MTV. The video features caricature puppets by the British television show Spitting Image. After Phil Collins saw a caricatured version of himself on the show, he commissioned the show's creators, Peter Fluck and Roger Law, to create puppets of the entire band, as well as all the characters in the video.
The video opens with a caricatured Ronald Reagan (voiced by Chris Barrie), Nancy Reagan, and a chimpanzee (parodying Reagan's film Bedtime for Bonzo), going to bed at 16:30 (4:30 PM). Nancy is absorbed in reading His Way, Kitty Kelley's unauthorized biography of Frank Sinatra, in which claims are made of sexual relations between Sinatra and the then actress Nancy Davis prior to her marriage to Reagan. Reagan, holding a teddy bear, goes to sleep and begins to have a nightmare, which sets the premise for the entire video. The video intermittently features a line of stomping feet, illustrating an army marching through a swamp, and they pick up heads of Cold War-era political figures in the swamp along the way (an allusion to Motel Hell).