Land of Confusion

Land of Confusion
genesis
publication	November 10, 1986
length	4:45
Genre (s)	Rock music
text	Mike Rutherford
music	Phil Collins , Tony Banks , Mike Rutherford
album	Invisible touch

Land of Confusion is a song by the English rock band Genesis from their 1986 studio album Invisible Touch . The song is the third track on the music album and the third single from the album. The rock music was composed by the entire band, the English-language lyrics were written by the band guitarist Mike Rutherford . The English song title Land of Confusion means "land of confusion".

Composition and lyrics

The song is composed in the key of E flat minor in 4/4 time and has a tempo of 115 beats per minute .

The lyrics deal with the political climate of fear and aggression and “an impending nuclear inferno” during the Cold War in the era of Reagan - Thatcher - Gorbachev . Phil Collins described the song as “ A political song about the mess we have landed in. ” Mike Rutherford described the piece as an “80s protest song” and admitted, “I've never publicly stated myself as openly as in this song. My comments are otherwise short and casual. "He rated the lyrics he wrote as follows:

“It's about how we live in a very nice world, and what a mess we're making of it. How it should all be so easy and it's all so difficult. "

“The point here is that we live in a very beautiful world and destroy it. How everything could be so easy and how difficult everything is. "

Music video

The song became known mainly through the accompanying music video , which was broadcast extensively by the music broadcaster MTV and accordingly received a lot of airplay . The music video features cartoon latex dolls from the British television show Spitting Image . After singer and drummer Phil Collins saw the cartoon character of himself on the TV show , he commissioned the show's creators Peter Fluck and Roger Law to have dolls made by the other two band members. The music video was directed by British television producer John Lloyd and American director Jim Yukich. John Blair produced the piece.

action

The video begins with the spitting image figures of US President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy Reagan and a chimpanzee (a parody of Reagan's 1951 film Bedtime for Bonzo ) who go to bed together at 4:30 pm. Nancy is absorbed in the unauthorized biography His Way by Kitty Kelley about the American entertainer Frank Sinatra (1915-1998), in which his relationship with the actress Nancy (then with the surname) Davis is discussed before her wedding to Ronald Reagan.

Ronald falls asleep with a teddy bear in his arms and experiences a nightmare that sets the scene for the rest of the video. The video shows boots marching intermittently, illustrating an army trudging through the swamp (an allusion to the 1980 horror film Hotel zur Hölle ). Caricature versions of the band members are shown playing their instruments on a concert stage: Tony Banks behind an array of synthesizers (and a cash register full of biscuits), Mike Rutherford on a four-necked guitar (a parody of his dual role as lead and bass guitarist ) and two Phil Collins dolls: one on the drums and one on the microphone.

During the second stanza, the video shows various leaders delivering a speech on a large video screen to a mass audience . The video shows the heads of state Benito Mussolini , Ayatollah Khomeini , Mikhail Sergejewitsch Gorbachev with his assistants (who appear as Sinatra's Council Pack ), and Muammar al-Gaddafi . Meanwhile, Reagan dons a Superman costume and runs off with it while Collins sings:

Oh Superman where are you now When everything's gone wrong somehow The men of steel, the men of power Are losing control by the hour.

Oh Superman, where are you now? Since everything kind of went wrong The men of steel, the men of power Losing control every hour

In between, the sleeping Reagan is shown drowning in his own sweat while a rubber duck drifts by.

During the bridge , Reagan dressed up as Superman and a Monoclonius- like dinosaur watch a TV program with various video clips (presumably from the Spitting Image show itself), including TV entertainer Johnny Carson , news anchor Walter Cronkite , US President Richard Nixon , the actor Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock with a Rubik's Cube and the entertainer Bob Hope - the first visible clip is a curiosity, it shows Erich Honecker being hit with a banana by Helmut Kohl .

This turns into a sequence that is presumably set in prehistoric times. A Monoclonius-like and a theropod -like dinosaur (wearing a tie) meet with Ronald and Nancy Reagan, and a rather strange mammal eats an egg and reads a newspaper. At the end of the sequence, the monkey from the prologue throws a bone in the air, a reference to the science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey from 1968. When the bone falls back to the ground there is a cut and Collins catches one On the phone, which he uses to inform the person on the other end of the line: “ won't be coming home tonight, my generation will put it right ”, while the figure of Prince rubs his tongue with mustard & ketchup and tried to eat. A caricature of British musician Pete Townshend from The Who is shown playing the guitar, raising his thumb in appreciation for the supposed mention of her song My Generation .

In the text passage “ we're not just making promises ” Mick Jagger misses the bone and meets the musicians David Bowie and Bob Dylan . Reagan rides the Monoclonius through the streets wearing a cowboy hat and suit (a reference to Reagan's down-to-earth lifestyle on his ranch).

Just before the video peaks, there are intermittent scenes from a chorus of celebrities including Tina Turner , Michael Jackson , Madonna , Bill Cosby and Hulk Hogan singing together in the style of the song We Are the World while Pope John Paul II. accompanied the group on an electric guitar.

At the end of the video, Reagan wakes up from his nightmare and emerges from his sweat while Nancy is already wearing a snorkel. After he pours a drink on his face, he fumbles for a button next to his bed. He tries to press the call button for the nurse, but accidentally hits a button labeled "nuke", which detonates a nuclear weapon . Reagan responded with the laconic words: “ Man, that's one heck of a nurse! ”(German:“ Donnerwetter, well that's me a nurse! ”), Whereupon Nancy beats him with a snorkel .

Nominations and Awards

At the 1988 Grammy Awards , the video won the Best Concept Music Video category . The music video was also nominated for Video of the Year at the MTV Video Music Awards , but was defeated by the video for Sledgehammer by British musician Peter Gabriel , the previous frontman of Genesis.

Single releases

The album Invisible Touch was released on June 9, 1986, the single release of Land of Confusion on 10 November 1986. Its front cover shows a black and white photograph of Spitting Image-heads of the three band members in the style of the second studio album With the Beatles the Beatles . A newly mastered version ("digitally remastered") went on sale on June 1, 2007.

7 ": Virgin / GENS 3 (GB)

1. "Land of Confusion" - 4:45
2. "Feeding the Fire" - 5:54

7 ": Atlantic / 7-89336 (USA)

1. "Land of Confusion" (LP version) - 4:45
2. "Feeding the Fire" - 5:54

12 ": Virgin / GENS 3–12 (GB)

1. "Land of Confusion" (Extended Remix) - 6:55
2. "Land of Confusion" - 4:45
3. "Feeding the Fire" - 5:54

12 ": Virgin / 608 632-213 (Germany)

1. "Land of Confusion" (Extended Remix) - 6:55
2. "Land of Confusion" - 4:45
3. "Feeding the Fire" - 5:54

CD: Virgin / SNEG 3–12 (GB)

1. "Land of Confusion" - 4:45
2. "Land of Confusion" (Extended Remix) - 6:55
3. "Feeding the Fire" - 5:54
4. "Do the Neurotic" - 7:08

12 ": Atlantic / PR 968 (USA)

1. "Land of Confusion" (Extended Remix) - 6:55
2. "Land of Confusion" - 4:45

7 ": Atlantic / 7-89336 promo (USA)

1. "Land of Confusion" (Special Edited Remix) - 3:53
2. "Land of Confusion" (album version) - 4:45

* Remixes by John Potoker

occupation

• Phil Collins - drums, percussion , vocals
• Tony Banks - keyboards
• Mike Rutherford - electric guitar, bass guitar

Live performances

Genesis played the song on the four concert tours Invisible Touch (1986–87), The Way We Walk , Calling All Stations (1997–1998 with Ray Wilson as singer) and Turn It On Again: The Tour (March – October 2007). It was also released on the two live albums The Way We Walk, Volume One: The Shorts and Live over Europe 2007 and on the three live video DVDs Live at Wembley Stadium (July 1-4, 1987), The Way We Walk - Live in Concert (2002) and When in Rome 2007 (July 14, 2007).

Pop culture receptions

Land of Confusion was used in the last episode (5 × 22, Final Order / Freefall ) of the US television series Miami Vice (1984-1989), in which Phil Collins repeatedly had minor guest appearances. The song sets in the middle of an observation of the two main characters Sonny Crockett ( Don Johnson ) and Tubbs ( Philip Michael Thomas ) and dramatizes the intricacies of the final episode. The 2000 feature film American Psycho with Christian Bale also uses the song.

Cover versions

Several bands from different musical genres have released cover versions of the song:

• Former Genesis guitarist Daryl Stuermer modified the song into a smooth jazz- like version for his instrumental album Another Side of Genesis from 2000.
• Swedish melodic death metal band In Flames covered the song for their 2003 EP Trigger .
• The Swedish Eurodance group Alcazar adapted the chorus for their mashup This Is the World We Live In in 2004 .
• The American metal band Disturbed released a cover version of their third studio album Ten Thousand Fists in 2005 , which was also successfully released as a single. The Canadian-American comic artist Todd McFarlane produced a cartoon- style music video for it in 2006 . This cover version runs during the credits of the documentary Bigger, Stronger, Faster * .
• Canadian singer Nelly Furtado made a mashup version of the song by Genesis and her single Powerless (Say What You Want) for her 2010 Mi Plan tour .
• The Norwegian pop band Katzenjammer covered the song in an unusual instrumentation for their album A Kiss Before You Go in 2011 . The music video for the cover was released on CD / DVD in May 2012.
• The German punk rock band Hard Attack covered the song in 2003 for the fifth edition of the Punk Chartbusters series by the music label Wolverine Records .

reception

Commercial win

The song reached number 4 on the US Billboard Hot 100 , number 14 in the UK singles chart in late 1986 and number 8 in the Dutch Nederlandse Top 40 .

Chart placements

Charts	Top ranking	Weeks
Chart placements
Germany (GfK)	7th (15 weeks)	15th
Austria (Ö3)	27 (2 weeks)	2
Switzerland (IFPI)	8th (10 weeks)	10
United Kingdom (OCC)	14th (12 weeks)	12
United States (Billboard)	4th (21 weeks)	21st

Reviews

“The urgency of the marching piece is thwarted by the badly aged spitting image video with main actors like Gorbachev, Gaddafi and, uh, Prince. The song is about the Cold War, directed against Reagan's nuclear policy. Various metal bands understood the quasi-military severity of the piece and covered it. "

- Sassan Niasseri : Rolling Stone

“Although Hugh Padgham contends the album was made up of bits of jams , taped together, this sounds like a well conceived, complete entity. Drums rap out a staccato military tattoo while a synth bass keeps the mills of war grinding. "

- Chris Welch : Genesis: The Complete Guide to Their Music

Land of Confusion is the most rock oriented song on the first side built with Rutherford's guitar riff and a synth bass arpeggio by Banks. The fine bridge section also brings this song closest to the classic Genesis of years earlier.

- Ric Albano : Classic Rock Review

Web links

• Genesis Land of Confusion in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Genesis - Land Of Confusion on YouTube
• Disturbed - Land Of Confusion on YouTube

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ryne Carman: The Top 10 Genesis Songs From The Peter Gabriel And Phil Collins Eras. In: Odyssey. November 8, 2016, accessed January 2, 2017 .  
2. ^ Anil Prasad: Genesis: Turning it on again. In: Innerviews.org. 2007, accessed October 31, 2016 .  
3. ^ ^{A b c} Günter Schneidewind : Hits and Stories - Land of Confusion. In: SWR1 . January 30, 2016, accessed January 2, 2017 .  
4. ↑ ^{a b} Land of Confusion by Genesis. In: Songfacts. Accessed January 2, 2017 .  
5. ↑ Bedtime for Bonzo in the Internet Movie Database (English)
6. ↑ Kitty Kelley: His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra . Bantam, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-553-38618-9 , pp. 688 (English).
7. ^ Grammy Awards - 1987. ( Memento from September 21, 2005 on the Internet Archive ) In: 80music.about.com.
8. ↑ Invisible Touch. genesis-movement.org.
9. ↑ We Can't Dance. In: genesis-movement.org .
10. ↑ Calling All Stations. In: genesis-movement.org .
11. ^ Studio & Misc. In: genesis-movement.org .
12. ↑ American Psycho in the Internet Movie Database (English)
13. ↑ Jonathan Widran: Daryl Stuermer - Another Side of Genesis . Allmusic . All Media Network. Retrieved January 22, 2017.
14. ↑ In Flames - Trigger EP . AllMusic. All Media Network. Retrieved January 22, 2017.
15. ↑ Chris Harris: Todd McFarlane to make Genesis 'Confusion' clip even more disturbed. In: MTV . October 3, 2006, accessed January 22, 2017 .  
16. ↑ Disturbed: Land of Confusion in the Internet Movie Database (English)
17. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Chart sources: DE AT CH UK US
18. ↑ Sassan Niasseri: The 25 Best Songs by Phil Collins and Genesis. In: Rolling Stone . January 24, 2015, accessed October 31, 2016 .  
19. ↑ Chris Welch: Genesis: Complete Guide To Their Music . Omnibus Press, London 2005, ISBN 1-84449-868-9 , pp. 127 (English).
20. ^ Ric Albano: Invisible Touch by Genesis. In: Classic Rock Review. June 9, 2016, accessed January 22, 2017 .