Up | ||||
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Studio album by Peter Gabriel | ||||
Released | 23 September 2002 | |||
Recorded | April 1995 – October 1998 (Principal recording), Early 2000 – April 2002 (Additional recording) |
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Studio |
Real World Studios, Box, England, (Principal recording) The Meduse and the Real World Mobile Recorder in Senegal and France (Additional recording) |
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Genre | Progressive rock, art rock, electronic rock, industrial rock, downtempo, worldbeat | |||
Length | 66:40 | |||
Label | Geffen (US & Canada), Virgin | |||
Producer | Peter Gabriel | |||
Peter Gabriel chronology | ||||
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Singles from Up | ||||
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Professional ratings | |
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Aggregate scores | |
Source | Rating |
Metacritic | 74/100 |
Review scores | |
Source | Rating |
Allmusic | |
Entertainment.ie | |
Entertainment Weekly | A− |
The Guardian | |
Kludge | 7/10 |
Pitchfork Media | 7.2/10 |
Rolling Stone |
Up (2002) is the seventh studio and 13th album overall released by the English rock musician Peter Gabriel. It is his last full-length studio album of new original material to date, as the subsequent albums Scratch My Back and New Blood feature orchestral renderings of Gabriel's older material and covers of other artists' songs.
Gabriel began work on the album in the spring of 1995. Its name was Up from the start, though at one point the name I/O was considered. Gabriel began saying the album was near completion somewhere around 1998 but did not release it until September 2002. In the months preceding the album's release, video clips of Gabriel talking about the songs as well as short demos of each song were released at the coming of every full moon on Gabriel's official website.
The album's lyrics deal mostly with birth and especially death. The opening track, "Darkness", is a song about overcoming fears. "Growing Up" is a summation of life put to a pulsating beat. "Sky Blue" is a track Gabriel claimed to have been working on for 10 years before finishing it. The track "No Way Out" is the first track to deal with death solely, though death is a common theme across the entire album. "I Grieve" was conceived after Gabriel looked over his catalogue of music as if it were a catalogue of emotional tools. He found one major missing tool to be one to cope with death and therefore "I Grieve" was born. Gabriel performed the song live on the television show Larry King Weekend on the one-year anniversary of September 11 attacks in the U.S., during which Gabriel said that his two daughters were living in New York City and he could not contact them for some time, and that this song was for people who did not hear anything from their relatives then. It was not, however, written specifically for 9/11, having appeared on the City of Angels soundtrack in 1998 (in an earlier version) and performed live prior to 9/11.
The first single from Up, "The Barry Williams Show" is a down-beat, jazzy song dealing with reality talk shows such as Jerry Springer (in fact, The Brady Bunch star Barry Williams appeared as an audience member in the Sean Penn-directed music video for the song with Requiem for a Dream actor Christopher McDonald playing the titular talk show host).