Art-rock eminemce Peter Gabriel is right smack in the middle of releasing his new album o\i. It's been coming out in installments all year, with Gabriel releasing a new song on the night of every full moon. One month after the 10-minute epic "One by One," he's back with "Looking For the Happy," which clocks in at a relatively brisk eight and a half minutes. It's a lush, expansive synth-funk number about searching for joy an an internet age. As someone who once owned a Peter Gabriel CD-Rom, I am bummed to think about this guy having to function on the social media landscape in any way. Here's what Gabriel says about the song:
I've always found it so much easier to write sad songs than happy ones, and I thought, right, I'm going to challenge myself here. I wanted to base it on a groove that made dancing irresistible, it felt like it was unleashing some joy. Although this is about the search for happiness, it had to have a chorus feeling like a celebration.
If you can find what in today, in the now, is making you happy and what you're grateful for, I think it's a much better ride — a better vehicle to travel in — and as I get older, I'm trying to do a little less bitching.
In the song, I'm talking about trying to communicate with animals or connecting with nature, or sitting under the old oak tree with a cup of tea and appreciating that. The simple things — opening up to what's good, while we're busy complaining about what's bad.
Trying to get a handle on where you fit in life, that's part of what I write about a lot. Also getting comfortable with two contradictory ideas simultaneously has been part of growing old — like being a part of everything and a part of nothing.
This was one of those songs that began with a groove, originally a groove with a Latin flavor. The groove is always so important to me, if I don't feel it in my body, then everything is a whole lot harder. There are obviously songs I write which are not groove based, but this is one where it clearly helped shape the song. I'm always happy once the groove is kicking, it suggests where to go and makes it easy to play through and explore different ideas. Then I can take one look around the studio at any time and see happy faces everywhere and I think — this is why I play music.
This time around the cover art is Closed Circuit II by Tishan Hsu. Gabriel says:
I've only recently come across Tishan Hsu's work, and I was blown away. I thought it had a childlike simplicity in one sense, like Miro or Paul Klee, but it has all these technological references.
In the way that the song was trying to explore consciousness, technology, and nature, I think Tishan does that in some of his own work. Although the work is about tech, it’s interesting that the work itself is not really technology-based — it is very traditional painting and sculptural techniques that he's employing.
I started looking at a work from 1986 which is called Closed Circuit II, and although it has been compared to the original Instagram logo, it was created a long time before that. It's simple and it has face references, but it's blank and full of feeling at the same time. I think it's a great, great image, and I'm very happy Tishan is letting us use it.
Often when we see these images for the songs, we're reacting spontaneously to something that feels right, and then we dig down and discover that there are similar themes being explored visually and musically. In this case, it was apparently the exploration of technology nature and humanity. It's great when you find that something that intuitively felt right also has all these other connections that help to make the music and the art feel part of the same whole. In a way, you're all trying to peel the orange and open up the same fruit.
Check out the song below.
