Although Gabriel continued to use the pioneering Fairlight CMI synthesizer, songs from these sessions were notably less experimental than his previous material. Nevertheless, Gabriel drew on various musical influences, fusing pop, soul and art rock with elements of traditional world music, particularly African and Brazilian styles. It is Gabriel's first non-eponymous album, So representing an "anti-title" that resulted from label pressure to properly market his music. Gabriel toured So on the This Way Up tour (1986–1987), with some songs performed at human rights and charity concerts during this period.
Often considered his best and most accessible album, So was an immediate commercial success and transformed Gabriel from a cult artist into a mainstream star, becoming his best-selling solo release. It has been certified fivefold platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America and triple platinum by the British Phonographic Industry. The album's lead single, "Sledgehammer", was promoted with an innovative animated music video and achieved particular success, reaching number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 and subsequently winning a record of nine MTV Video Music Awards. It was followed by four further singles, "Don't Give Up" (a duet with Kate Bush), "Big Time", "In Your Eyes" and "Red Rain".
The album received positive reviews from most critics, who praised its songwriting, melodies and fusion of genres, although some retrospective reviews have criticised its overt commercialism and 1980s production sounds. So was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1987 but lost to Paul Simon's Graceland. It has continued to appear in lists of the best albums of the 1980s and was included at number 187 in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. So was remastered in 2002, partially re-recorded for Gabriel's 2012 orchestral project New Blood and issued as a box set the same year.
Prior to recording So, Gabriel released four studio albums all titled Peter Gabriel. They received nicknames based on their sleeve art, which were designed by English duo Hipgnosis. His debut, Car (1977), received positive reviews, mainly because of the hugely popular "Solsbury Hill", which concerned the site of the same name near Ashcombe House, Gabriel's estate to the north-east of Bath in Somerset. His second album—Scratch (1978)—fared less well and it was not until Melt (1980) that Gabriel was considered a progressive solo artist. Melt included the emotive anti-apartheid song "Biko" and the popular "Games Without Frontiers", with Gabriel helping to "blueprint the sound of 80s rock through its trailblazing use of what became known as the "gated reverb" drum effect." In the early 1980s, Gabriel embarked on various projects, including founding the World Music, Arts and Dance Festival (WOMAD), with a WOMAD album featuring himself, Robert Fripp, Pete Townshend and other artists of the world music genre. His fourth album, Security (1982)—also released in German as the Deutsches Album (1982)—saw success with Gabriel's music video for the eye-opening "Shock the Monkey". Gabriel won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for scoring the soundtrack to the film Birdy (1984).
Since 1978, Gabriel had composed all of his music at Ashcombe House, including his fourth studio album Peter Gabriel or "Security" (1982) and the Birdy (1984) soundtrack. An inexpensive studio existed in the house's adjacent barn, consisting of two rooms, one where Gabriel would produce his vocals and work on lyrics, and another where the music would be assembled. When preparing for So, Gabriel considered Chic's Nile Rodgers and Bill Laswell as potential producers. He eventually asked his Birdy collaborator, Daniel Lanois, to stay at Ashcombe and work with him further. Rehearsals began in May 1985 and consisted of Gabriel, Lanois and guitarist David Rhodes. Gabriel had begun work on some songs and provided Lanois and Rhodes with chord structures, around which they built their own improvised compositions. Lanois recalled they had "a nice starting point [as] in that kind of scenario, it's not a good idea to have a lot of people around because you get nervous that you're wasting other people's time". Consequently, there was a relaxed atmosphere surrounding these sessions and the trio would jokingly refer to themselves as The Three Stooges, an American vaudeville act of the mid-twentieth century. This also involved the wearing of construction site hard hats as they had a "turning up for work humour". As sessions grew, engineer Kevin Killen, bassist Tony Levin, and drummer Jerry Marotta became significant contributors, and were aided by percussionists Manu Katché and Stewart Copeland and violinist L. Shankar.
The studio's basic equipment consisted of "two analog 24-track machines, a Studer A80, and a Studer A80 shell that had been modified by a local electronics wizard, with its own audio cards and transport controls". To record vocals a Neumann U47 tube microphone and a Decca compressor were used without equalization. All of So's songs were made in a similar format. Gabriel would record a piano demo on a modified "B machine" and play this to the band. During rehearsals, the band would listen to the B machine through headphones and record their output onto the "A machine"; parts of Gabriel's demo would also be transferred to the A machine at this stage. Subsequent takes of the song were then put onto the B machine in order for the band to hear what they had played with the demo, as well as the song's new and old takes.
Other equipment included the "groundbreaking" Fairlight CMI synthesizer, which Gabriel said in an interview for Billboard meant "more human imagination is involved". He added, "the creative decision-making process has become more important than technique. You have a wider range of tools, a wider range of decisions". Although remaining continually inspired to produce new music, he often struggled to write lyrics and would procrastinate. His proclivity to being dissatisfied with them required Killen to isolate certain vocal performances as the master track, in order to keep other tracks available so new lyrics could be edited in. Lanois took adverse measures to encourage his writing, such as destroying his much-used telephone in the nearby woods and, on one occasion, nailed the studio door shut to lock him inside.
Towards the end of recording, Gabriel became "obsessed" with the album's track listing and created an audio cassette of all the song's beginnings and ends in order to hear how the sounds blended together. His original intention was to have "In Your Eyes" at the end of the record, but because of its prominent bass line, it had to be placed earlier in the listing on the vinyl edition as there is more room for the stylus to vibrate. With later CD releases, this restriction was removed and the track was placed at the end of the album. So was completed in February 1986 and cost £200,000 to make. It was over-dubbed at Power Station Studios in New York, despite Gabriel considering sending it via a computer-telephone set up, reasoning, "that's a lot of information to send via phone. Isn't it amazing though? You can send a song idea around the world to musicians then beam parts back by satellite". It was mastered by Ian Cooper in mid-February 1986 at London's Townhouse Studios.
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