Sledgehammer (Peter Gabriel song)
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| Single by Peter Gabriel | |||||||||||||||
| from the album So | |||||||||||||||
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| Released | 25 April 1986 | ||||||||||||||
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| Recorded | 1985 at Ashcombe House (Bath, England) |
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| Writer(s) | Peter Gabriel | ||||||||||||||
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"Sledgehammer" is a song by English rock musician Peter Gabriel, which appeared on his 1986 album So, and was produced by Gabriel and Daniel Lanois. It hit No. 1 in Canada on 21 July 1986, where it spent four weeks; No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States on 26 July 1986; and No. 4 on the UK Singles Chart, thanks in part to a popular and influential music video. It was his biggest hit in North America and ties with "Games Without Frontiers" as his biggest hit in the United Kingdom.
The song's music video won a record nine MTV Video Music Award at the 1987 MTV Video Music Awards and Best British Video at the 1987 Brit Awards. Gabriel was also nominated for three Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, Record of the Year and Song of the Year. As of 2011, "Sledgehammer" was the most played music video in the history of MTV.
The song was influenced by 1960s soul music, in particular that made by Memphis label Stax. The distinctive horn track was provided by a horn section led by Wayne Jackson of the Memphis Horns, Stax's house musicians.
"It's probably about three years old… I was playing at that time with the idea of doing an album full of soul songs – mainly other people's, but maybe a couple of my own. I'm still tempted, although probably that would be construed as an even greater sell-out. But, as a teenager, soul music was one of the things that made me want to be a musician. It was really passionate and exciting… Wayne Jackson, who plays on that track, was also with Otis Redding and was touring with him when I saw them in London. So that was a thrill for me, just to get a whole lot of fan stories. But I think the song was more influenced by many of those Stax and Atlantic tracks rather than Otis particularly." – Peter Gabriel, July 1986
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