{"id":279755,"date":"2025-11-08T17:49:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T17:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/279755\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T17:49:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T17:49:10","slug":"back-in-1986-genesis-released-their-5-biggest-hits-on-one-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/279755\/","title":{"rendered":"Back in 1986, Genesis Released Their 5 Biggest Hits\u2026 On One Album"},"content":{"rendered":"

We at American Songwriter have some fun from time to time, looking back at the five biggest US hits of a particular artist. As far as we can tell, in only one case did the five songs come from a single album.<\/p>\n

The band was Genesis, and the album was their 1986 blockbuster Invisible Touch. With five smash singles, the LP completed the British trio\u2019s transformation from prog rock adventurers to pop music sure shots.<\/p>\n

Prog to Pop<\/p>\n

If you were to have made a list in the mid-70s or so of which rock bands you thought might eventually become pop stars, Genesis likely would have ranked near the bottom. In fact, the members of the band had initially hoped that they could write pop songs when they started. But they decided they weren\u2019t very good at it and shifted towards artier ambitions.<\/p>\n

The tide started to change for this long-running group once Peter Gabriel left to go off on his own. (Gabriel, ironically enough, would do quite well in the pop music world himself.) Whittled down to a trio, Genesis started to sense that the prog rock was creatively and commercially limiting. And, since Gabriel had defined that era for them, why wouldn\u2019t they start to try new things?<\/p>\n

Around the same time that they started to subtly turn towards a more accessible sound, lead singer Phil Collins became an unlikely solo star with his 1981 album Face Value and its brooding hit \u201cIn The Air Tonight\u201d. It made sense for Genesis to capitalize on that. But nobody could have predicted they\u2019d do that so effectively.<\/p>\n

Phil\u2019s Momentum<\/p>\n

Genesis\u2019 first three studio albums of the 80s all contained at least one hit single, with \u201cThat\u2019s All\u201d<\/a> in 1983 giving them their first-ever US Top 10. In 1985, Phil Collins released the album No Jacket Required, which spun off four Top 10 hits. Not to mention a pair of extra Collins\u2019 No. 1s, \u201cAgainst All Odds\u201d and \u201cSeparate Lives\u201d (with Marilyn Martin), which came from movies in 1984 and 1985, respectively.<\/p>\n

In other words, Genesis entered the making of Invisible Touch with a perfect storm of exposure. Collins had risen to the upper echelons of the music world, in terms of his commercial success, alongside heavyweights like Madonna and Prince. The next Genesis album couldn\u2019t help but draw a ton of attention.<\/p>\n

Genesis didn\u2019t head into the album with any mercenary thoughts of churning out hits. In fact, they went into it with nothing at all. The band had nothing pre-written when they entered their dedicated studio, known as The Farm, in late 1985. They decided they\u2019d simply jam their way to an album\u2019s worth of tracks. One by one, songs started to appear that would become radio staples in less than a year\u2019s time.<\/p>\n

\u2018Touch\u2019 and Go<\/p>\n

The title track, which Collins claimed later was a kind of homage to Sheila E in terms of its sound, set the radio-friendly tone. Electronic drums and chirping synths, which were hallmarks of the entire album, accompanied this ode to a captivating female. It gave the band their first-ever US chart-topper.<\/p>\n

And there was plenty more where that came from. The downcast ballads \u201cThrowing It All Away\u201d and \u201cIn Too Deep\u201d, the politically charged \u201cLand Of Confusion\u201d, and the atmospheric \u201cTonight, Tonight, Tonight\u201d all landed in the Top 5.<\/p>\n

Some fans of the band\u2019s earlier era didn\u2019t care much for Genesis\u2019 turn to the world of hitmaking. But it\u2019s impossible to deny the results. Invisible Touch turned out to be an ironic title because Genesis popped up everywhere you looked or listened in 1986.<\/p>\n

Photo by Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We at American Songwriter have some fun from time to time, looking back at the five biggest US…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,104867,216,2156],"class_list":["post-279755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-genesis","tag-music","tag-rock-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}