So (1986) — Peter Gabriel
I have twenty-four Peter Gabriel albums. I have ten Kate Bush albums. For years they sat on the same shelves as two separate collections — two artists I admire who happened to share a producer (Daniel Lanois, fourteen albums in my collection) and a willingness to make music that doesn’t fit neatly into any genre.
Then I looked at the credits on So and found out they made a song together.
“Don’t Give Up” is a duet. Gabriel sings the verses — a man out of work, beaten down, talking about giving up. Kate Bush sings the choruses — telling him not to. The song won an Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically in 1987.
But here’s the part I didn’t know: Gabriel didn’t write it for Kate Bush. He wrote it for Dolly Parton.
According to a 1989 interview, Gabriel approached Parton to sing the song with him. She turned it down. So Gabriel asked his friend Kate Bush instead. Bush was reportedly nervous about participating, but according to assistant engineer David Stallbaumer, her vocal take improved the song “almost instantaneously.” She delivered the reassuring chorus — “Rest your head, you worry too much. It’s going to be all right” — on her second attempt.
The song was inspired by Depression-era photographs by Dorothea Lange. Gabriel had seen Lange’s images in a book called In This Proud Land and felt they connected to unemployment in Thatcher’s Britain. He’d also watched a television programme about how joblessness tears families apart. The title — “Don’t Give Up” — came from his then-wife Jill, who would say it to him during his depressive episodes. “When he gets into very deep depressions, I am always saying don’t give up,” she told an interviewer. “I think the song is very much about us.”
The recording had its own strange details. Tony Levin, who played bass, placed a nappy behind his strings to dampen the sound. He’d packed nappies in his gig bag for his two-month-old daughter because he mistakenly thought they weren’t sold in the UK. Richard Tee contributed piano in the bridge to give it a gospel feel. Daniel Lanois co-produced.
The music video — directed by Godley & Creme — showed Gabriel and Bush embracing in a single take while an eclipse happened behind them. Before filming, Gabriel asked his wife Jill for her blessing. She gave it. According to Gabriel, she later said: “Of course, darling, you go right ahead.” And then, he said, “the video hurt her every time she saw it.”
The song has had an afterlife I wasn’t aware of. Elton John has credited it with helping his sobriety. “She played a big part in my rebirth,” he said of Bush’s vocal. “That record helped me so much.” Actor Matthew Perry, who struggled with addiction, had the song played at his funeral in 2023. He’d written “Don’t give up” in signed copies of his autobiography. Gabriel said in 1989 that “a well-known American comedian” had told him the song saved his life.
I have twenty-four Peter Gabriel albums. I have ten Kate Bush albums. The song that connects them — the one where their voices actually meet — turned out to be the one Dolly Parton didn’t want to sing.
Album: So — Peter Gabriel (1986, Charisma/Virgin/Geffen) Key credits: Kate Bush (guest vocals on “Don’t Give Up”), Tony Levin (bass), Daniel Lanois (co-producer, guitar), Manu Katché (drums), David Rhodes (guitar), Richard Tee (piano), Stewart Copeland (hi-hat on “Red Rain,” drums on “Big Time”)