ARTIST: Peter Gabriel

CREATOR: Dave Johnson

SONG: Games Without Frontiers FROM Peter Gabriel 3

Video info:

Games Without Frontiers has always been a favourite from Peter Gabriel's oeuvre, a song that brilliantly lampoons the absurdity and dangers of political games, power struggles, and the theatre of war. Tragically, it feels as pertinent today as ever. That made me keen to choose it, and my hope is that the heightened, surreal, and narrative approach I’ve taken complements the song’s mix of satire and menace.

Working with AI felt like a natural extension of Peter’s experimental spirit in music videos - a way to amplify the song’s themes and push the visual language far beyond what a conventional music video budget would allow. The mind boggles at what it might have cost to achieve this the traditional way.

Song info:

Games Without Frontiers is a track taken from Peter Gabriel's third solo album, released in May 1980.

Words and music by Peter Gabriel. Produced by Steve Lillywhite.

Published by Real World Music Ltd. / Sony Music Publishing.

‘I liked it. It’s a device I use quite often, taking titles or phrases from ordinary situations and trying to put them up against a slightly different background that will give them a new slant.

It’s an area I’m much more interested in than a totally fabricated, artificial world. For ‘Games’ I was thinking about adults behaving like kids, countries behaving like kids in the way that modes of behaviour that were unacceptable in normal society were perfectly acceptable on an international scale.’ - pg

ARTIST: Peter Gabriel

CREATOR: ALTER.LAB

SONG: Solsbury Hill FROM Peter Gabriel 1

Video info

Creating an animation for a song as legendary as ‘Solsbury Hill’ has been a profound honor for our team. As a cornerstone of Peter Gabriel's legacy, it's a track that has moved generations since 1977, and one that holds a special place in our own stories.

Our animation aims to capture the song's powerful core message: the courage to let go and embrace a new beginning, even in the face of an unknown future. We drew inspiration from the rich visual history of the song, which weaves together work from directors like Graham Dean and Peter Campus, and notably features excerpts from the film 'Cabbages' by David Stewart and Wesley West. We sought to reinterpret these collective elements to express the pivotal moment of transformation as Peter embarked on his solo journey after Genesis.

This theme is also deeply personal to us. In many ways, the animation is an allegory for our own journeys. Every member of our team has taken a similar leap of faith, leaving certainty behind to pursue a life in art—a path filled with challenges, but also with incredible satisfaction.

Song info:

Solsbury Hill is a track taken from Peter Gabriel's first solo album, released in February 1977.

Words and music by Peter Gabriel. Produced by Bob Ezrin for My Own Production Co Ltd.

Published by Real World Music Ltd. / Sony Music Publishing.

‘With the first album I’d just left Genesis and had been used to having roles defined, and so suddenly to find myself in a studio full of serious musicians (serious in terms of their ability and what they’d done and so on) was unnerving.

It took me three albums to get the confidence and to find out what I could do that made me different from other people. And the first record really was a process of trying …’ - pg

ARTIST: Peter Gabriel

CREATOR: Del Bey

SONG: Olive Tree (Bright-Side Mix) FROM i/o

Video info

Rooted in the tension between connection and survival, Del’s creative work explores the pull between grounding in community and the constant movement required to endure. Through digital collage, video, with symbolic imagery, she reflects on nature’s resilience and the search for peace and purpose.

Del documented corresponding times and dates on a stationary travel clock over three years - a meditation on stillness and documenting the growth of forty-year-old ficus trees' roots. Organic forms that, like olive trees, serve as living metaphors for memory, endurance, and renewal. They echo her own path as an artist, teacher, and caregiver, shaped by experiences influenced by her African-American, Jamaican, Cherokee, and European heritage.

Her layered process traverses Photoshop, Premiere Pro, iMovie, AI tools, and iPhone, reshaping and reanimating imagery until rhythm and movement emerge. The result is a body of work that holds both struggle and hope, offering space for renewal, presence, and connection.

Song info:

Olive Tree is a track taken from Peter Gabriel's album i/o, released on 1 December 2023. This is the Bright-Side Mix, by Mark 'Spike' Stent.

Words and music by Peter Gabriel. Produced by Peter Gabriel.

Published by Real World Music Ltd. / Sony Music Publishing.

“This song is one of those taken from this next brain project that I am working on. We are entering a time in which reading each other’s thoughts will become a normal part of our lives. In this story our hero puts on the brain scanning helmet, that turns thoughts into pictures, and then sees all the deep connections he has with the natural world and in particular to one olive tree.

In many ways, we are part of everything and we probably have the means to connect and communicate with everything, yet we often shut it off. We only want to see and listen to the things that seem important and relevant to us and shut out the noise of everything else. But probably, hidden in that noise, there are all sorts of things that can help us realise our place in this future world and help us remember we are still apes who need a healthy natural world to survive.”

-pg