Peter Gabriel -- Shock the Monkey

 

Welcome to the weekly Reminiscings of Youth article, and today I have a song whose music video has been seen as one of the more incredible productions ever. It also terrified the heck out of me when I first saw it as a teenager.

"Shock the Monkey" by Peter Gabriel did indeed alarm me initially because of the title and the unsettling video because I had wondered whether it was one of those creations which showed some poor monkey undergoing tortuous experiments. Instead, as I gradually discovered, Gabriel had actually wanted to address the issue of jealousy as represented by the gibbon in the video (not technically a monkey as noted in Wikipedia). It was the first time for me to see Gabriel as the premise seemed like something out of a psychological spy thriller with an intelligence agent eventually succumbing to those mysterious external forces.

I'd heard about Peter Gabriel all throughout 1982, the year that "Shock the Monkey" was released as a single in September. I had known about his time with the band Genesis although I never listened to them when they were an artsy progressive rock band in the 1970s. My knowledge of the band grew when they decided to go into a more pop and chart-friendly direction while Gabriel who had left Genesis went into other pastures of music. 

"Shock the Monkey" is a synthpop sensation with a great and immediately recognizable hook and I will always love Gabriel's exhortation of "SHOCK!" in the middle of the song. For that matter, I'd never heard vocals like his before; somewhere between a mix of rock star and siren. In Canada, the song hit No. 10 on RPM while in America, it did somewhat more modestly by peaking at No. 29 on Billboard.

Now, what was making the Oricon chart in September 1982? I have No. 1, No. 2 and... No. 10.

1. Aming -- Matsu wa (待つわ）

2. Hiromi Go -- Aishuu no Casablanca （哀愁のカサブランカ）

10. Naoko Kawai -- Kenka wo Yamete (けんかをやめて）