Songoftheday 2/24/15 - I must've dreamed a thousand dreams, been haunted by a million screams...
from the album Invisible Touch (1986)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #4 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 15
Today's Song of the Day comes from the British progressive rock-gone-pop trio Genesis, whose 1986 album Invisible Touch had already scored the band their first #1 hit with the title track and a top-5 follow-up with "Throwing It All Away". The third single from the set, "Land Of Confusion", had the same white-boy funk backdrop as some of Phil Collins' solo ventures, and a sped-up BPM to augment the sense of paranoia in the lyrics from guitarist Mike Rutherford. The music video featured puppets from the popular British show Spitting Images done as the group as well as some world leaders and entertainment icons...
"Land Of Confusion" became the third top-10 pop hit from Invisible Touch in January of 1987, while climbing to #11 on the Mainstream Rock radio chart in Billboard magazine. Internationally, the record made the top-10 in Canada, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, but in their native England it stopped short at #14 (surprising, considering the popularity of the video).
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Here's the band live on tour behind the album in 1987...
In 2004, Swedish Eurodance act Alcazar interpolated the song in their single "This Is The World We Live In", which was a top-10 hit in Hungary, Belgium, and their homeland, and #15 in the UK...
Two years later, American alt-metal band the Disturbed covered "Land Of Confusion" outright, and went all the way to #1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart, #18 on the Alternative Rock list, and #79 in England (it "bubbled under" the pop chart as well)...
Finally, we come back to Genesis on their 2007 tour...
Up tomorrow: Romance is an eternity for this Trinidadian.
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