MUSIC FROM SPACE: Peter Gabriel - DIGGING IN THE DIRT

After he left Genesis, Peter Gabriel went on to have quite a good run in the 1980s, crafting some powerful and smart pop tunes and starring in music videos that were as fascinating to watch as they were agonizing to shoot. The Sledgehammer video was notoriously difficult to make, with Gabriel lip-syncing to the track frame by frame for weeks, as animators crawled all over him and fiddled around with little clay blobs on his face.

By 1992's Us, Gabriel was slipping off the charts. It's not unlikely you never saw the video for Digging In the Dirt, featuring one of Gabriel's best songs wedded to some positively nightmarish imagery. Domestic abuse, death and decay, claymation monsters, snails... Nobody will blame you if you need to take a break in the middle of this clip to go spend a few minutes hyperventilating into a paper bag. (Could it be, this time Gabriel has gone too far?)

But come back for the finish. There's a happy ending of sorts, and we've sure earned it.