"Games Without Frontiers" is a song written and recorded by the English rock musician Peter Gabriel. It was released on his 1980 self-titled third studio album, where it included backing vocals by Kate Bush.[5] The song's lyrics are interpreted as a commentary on war and international diplomacy being like children's games.[6] The music video includes film clips of Olympic Games events and scenes from the educational film Duck and Cover (1951), which used a cartoon turtle to instruct US schoolchildren on what to do in case of nuclear attack. This forlorn imagery tends to reinforce the song's anti-war theme. Two versions of the music video were initially created for the song, followed by a third one made in 2004.
The single became Gabriel's first top-10 hit in the United Kingdom, peaking at No. 4, and—tied with 1986's "Sledgehammer" —his highest-charting song in the United Kingdom. It peaked at No. 7 in Canada, but only at No. 48 in the United States. The B-side of the single consisted of two tracks combined into one: "Start" and "I Don't Remember".[7] A remix of "Games Without Frontiers" by Massive Attack and Dave Bottrill was included on Gabriel's 1993 single "Steam"; this version later appeared on the Flotsam and Jetsam album in 2019.[8]
Background
Gabriel's first two solo studio albums were distributed in the US by Atlantic Records, but they rejected his third studio album (which contained this track), telling Gabriel he was committing "commercial suicide". Atlantic dropped him but tried to buy the album back when "Games Without Frontiers" took off in the UK and started getting airplay in the US. At that point Gabriel wanted nothing to do with Atlantic, and let Mercury Records distribute the album in America.[9] Gabriel opted not to publicly reveal that the backing vocals on "Games Without Frontiers" were from Kate Bush until the single was successful.[10]
The song's title refers to Jeux sans frontières, a long-running TV show broadcast in several European countries. Teams representing a town or city in one of the participating countries would compete in games of skill, often while dressed in bizarre costumes. While some games were simple races, others allowed one team to obstruct another. The British version was titled It's a Knockout—words that Gabriel mentions in the lyrics.[11] Gabriel found the title "Games Without Frontiers" in a TV guide.
That'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 more interested in than a totally fabricated artificial world.[10]
During his 1986-1987 tour, Gabriel directed the song's critique of militarism at the Contra War in Nicaragua.[12] Gabriel's 1991 performance of the song from the Netherlands was beamed via satellite to Wembley Arena in England as part of "The Simple Truth" concert for Kurdish refugees.[13]
Composition
Gabriel observed that the song "seemed to have several layers to it. I just began playing in a somewhat light-hearted fashion...the names themselves are meaningless, but they do have certain associations with them. So it's almost like a little kids' activity room. Underneath that, you have the TV programme [and the] sort of nationalism, territorialism, competitiveness that underlies all that assembly of jolly people."[14] The lyrics "Adolf builds a bonfire/Enrico plays with it" echo lines from Evelyn Waugh's V-J Day diary ("Randolph built a bonfire and Auberon fell into it").[15]
Musically, "Games Without Frontiers" opens with a mixture of acoustic and electronic percussion, which is accompanied by a countoff.[6] The electronic percussion was triggered by a PAiA Programmable Drum Set; this was Gabriel's first use of a drum machine on one of his solo albums.[12][16] During the intro, a synth bass and an angular slide guitar figure enter with Kate Bush's vocals, creating a "dark sonic environment" as described by AllMusic reviewer Steve Huey.[6] The pre-choruses feature whistling and a Moog synthesizer; Larry Fast commented that this section was inspired by hocketing techniques found on Switched-On Bach, a Wendy Carlos album consisting of classical music played on a Moog synthesizer.[12] Following the final chorus, the song segues into a percussion breakdown punctuated by synth and guitar effects.[6][17]
Radio version, music videos
The album version includes the line "Whistling tunes we piss on the goons in the jungle" after the second verse and before the second chorus. This was replaced for the single with a more radio-friendly repeat of the line "Whistling tunes we're kissing baboons in the jungle" from the first chorus.[12] This version was also included in the initial copies of the Shaking the Tree (1990) compilation.[18]
The original music video was directed by David Mallet and features shots of children sitting around a dining table.[19] Footage from Olympic sporting events were featured along with a series of facial expressions from Gabriel, which were projected on television screens that change in time with the music.[12] Gabriel observed that the original music video attracted some controversy:
The idea of the song was countries behaving like playground kids. It's against nationalism, but they had seen me moving around the tables and thought that I was leering at them like a dirty old man. At the end, there was a whole series of children's toys, and they thought that the jack-in-the-box was an obvious reference to masturbation. So it says a lot more about the minds of the people who ran Top of the Pops than it did about my video.[12]
In 2004, the music video was updated to include excerpts from the films Active Site, Spiral and Grid by Israeli artist Michal Rovner. Additional footage was supplied by York Tillyer, Dan Blore and Marc Bessant.[19] Visuals from Duck and Cover, a 1951 educational film teaching children how to survive a nuclear attack, are also featured at the end of the music video.[12] This version was featured on the release of Gabriel's Play, a DVD compilation consisting of 23 music videos.[19]
Artwork
The photo in the single artwork was taken by Hipgnosis and designed by Storm Thorgerson, who utilised a technique developed by Les Krims where images from a Polaroid SX-70 camera are squashed to create various visual effects. Gabriel recalled that they treated the images with burnt matches and coins to achieve the illusion of a melted face. Thorgerson discussed how this process was conducted:
If one pushes around the developing picture sandwiched between two bits of plastic with a blunt instrument like the end of a pencil, the image is then smeared as it develops. Since this procedure is dead easy we did it loads of times along with Peter Gabriel in disfiguring himself by manipulating Polaroids as they developed. Peter impressed us greatly with his ability to appear in an unflattering way, preferring the theatrical or artistic to the cosmetic.[19]
Critical reception
Record World thought that the song's "creative percussion / keyboard / vocal mix and unique tempo shifts" made the song "as attractive as it is interesting."[20] Jim DeRogatis of the Chicago Sun-Times characterised the song as a "catchy single with edgy lyrics."[21]
Mark Beaumont of Louder Sound identified "Games Without Frontiers" as an "ultra-catchy" song pertaining to global tensions.[22] AllMusic praised the song as "one of the finest moments preceding Gabriel's commercial breakthrough in the mid-'80s".[6]Paste ranked the song number six on its list of the top 20 greatest Peter Gabriel songs, giving particular attention to Gabriel's and Bush's vocals, saying that the former "pronounces every lyric like a teacher taking attendance" and the latter sounds "phantasmagorical" as she "deliver[s] her haunted message until it finally sinks in".[23]
"Games Without Frontiers" reached the top 10 in Canada and the United Kingdom. In spite of the song's very modest chart showing in the US, it did quite well in Chicago, where it spent two weeks at No. 5 on the survey of superstation WLS-FM-AM[24] and ranked at No. 87 for the year.[25]
^ abcdefgBowman, Durrell (2 September 2016). Experiencing Peter Gabriel: A Listener's Companion. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 84–88. ISBN9781442252004.
^Capital Radio interview with Nicky Horne, broadcast 16 March 1980; transcribed in Gabriel fanzine White Shadow (no. 1, pp. 9-10), by editor Fred Tomsett
