Songoftheday 2/9/18 - Well the key to my survival was never in much doubt, the question was how I could keep sane trying to find the way out...

"No Son Of Mine" - Genesis
from the album I Can't Dance (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #12 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 16

Today's song of the day comes from the progressive rock turned hitmakers Genesis, who 1986 album Invisible Touch album had spun off five top ten pop hits with "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight", "Land Of Confusion", "In Too Deep", "Throwing It All Away" and the #1 hit "Invisible Touch". Also, in the latter half of the 1980s, both Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford had #1 pop hits in America with Phil's "Another Day In Paradise" and Mike & The Mechanics' "The Living Years". After a five-year break, Collins, Rutherford, and keyboardist Tony Banks reunited for their next band album together, We Can't Dance. Like their spin-off projects, this record set a more serious tone with its lyrical themes, even though it remained firmly in the mainstream sound they had such success with. The first single from the record was "No Son Of Mine", a somber tale of a runaway boy coming back to confront his abusive father. It was a complete 180 from the inanity of "Invisible Touch", and with no happy endings, it was quite a feat (and a lot of name recognition) that got pop radio to play this, their most heaviest (and possibly underrated) of songs...

"No Son Of Mine" climbed up to the top-20 on the American pop chart in January of 1992. The single spent five weeks at #3 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart, while also making it to #8 on their Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") format list. Internationally, the song returned the band to the top ten in their native Britain for the first time since 1983's "Mama" (surprisingly, none of the hits from Invisible Touch reached that mark in the UK), peaking at #6. The track went to #1 in Canada for two weeks in December of 1991, and reached the top ten in Germany (#3), Italy (#4), Norway (#4), Ireland (#5), the Netherlands (#7), Austria (#7), and Switzerland (#8). It also hit #13 in France and #29 in Australia.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


Genesis previewed the single at their appearance at the Billboard Music Awards in 1991, though the audience screaming is quite weird for this song...

Here's the trio on their 1992 tour behind the album...

Meanwhile, while Ray Wilson took over while Phil took a break from the band, Genesis actually used "No Son Of Mine" to open up their Calling All Stations concerts...

Finally, here's Collins reunited with Genesis in 2007 on their Turn It On Again tour...

Up tomorrow: Latina pop queen exists for romance.