Various Artists "Platinum 80s"

Platinum 80s is a double CD compilation album, released in 2002 by Warner Strategic Marketing.

Track list:

CD 1

1. Queen & David Bowie Under Pressure 3:57
2. Madonna Holiday 3:51
3. Peter Gabriel Sledgehammer 4:40
4. David Bowie Let's Dance 3:36
5. Talking Heads Road To Nowhere 4:19
6. Depeche Mode Personal Jesus (Single Edit) 3:43
7. Eurythmics Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) 4:35
8. Madness Our House 3:21
9. Genesis Invisible Touch 3:12
10. Simply Red Money's Too Tight 4:12
11. Fleetwood Mac Little Lies 3:37
12. The Smiths This Charming Man 2:42
13. Blondie Call Me 3:29
14. A-Ha The Sun Always Shines On TV 5:06
15. Tears For Fears Shout 4:45
16. Culture Club Do You Really Want To Hurt Me 4:22
17. Human League* Don't You Want Me 3:56
18. Prince Kiss 3:38
19. Falco Rock Me Amadeus 3:20
20. The Cars Drive 3:55

CD 2

1. John Lennon (Just Like) Starting Over 3:54
2. Pink Floyd Another Brick In The Wall (Pt. 2) 3:50
3. Van Halen Why Can't This Be Love 3:31
4. Frankie Goes To Hollywood Relax 3:56
5. Duran Duran Rio 4:44
6. Crowded House Don't Dream It's Over 3:53
7. Belinda Carlisle Heaven Is A Place On Earth 4:04
8. Bananarama Venus 3:38
9. Fine Young Cannibals Good Thing 3:09
10. Communards* Don't Leave Me This Way 4:29
11. New Order Blue Monday (88 Radio Edit) 3:48
12. Erasure Sometimes 3:37
13. Kim Wilde Kids In America 3:24
14. Simple Minds Don't You (Forget About Me) 4:18
15. Kate Bush Babooshka 3:28
16. Spandau Ballet Gold 3:52
17. Tina Turner What's Love Got To Do With It 3:35
18. The Pretenders Don't Get Me Wrong 3:46
19. Bee Gees You Win Again 3:50
20. Phil Collins In The Air Tonight 5:29

Phil Collins "...Hits"

Hits (stylized as ...Hits), released in 1998 and again in 2008, following the success of "In the Air Tonight" on the Cadbury ad campaign, is the first greatest hits album by English drummer and singer-songwriter Phil Collins. The collection included fourteen Top 40 hits, including seven American number 1 songs, spanning from the albums Face Value (1981) through Dance into the Light (1996). One new Collins recording, a cover of Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors", also appeared on the collection and was a popular song on adult contemporary stations. Hits was also the first Phil Collins album to include four songs originally recorded for motion pictures (all of them U.S. number 1 hits) as well as his popular duet with Philip Bailey, "Easy Lover" (a UK number 1 hit).

In 1998, the album reached number 1 in the United Kingdom and number 18 in the United States. On 4 August 2008, it became the number 1 album on the New Zealand RIANZ album chart. In July 2012, the album re-entered the U.S. charts, reaching number 6 on the Billboard 200 when the album price was deeply discounted very briefly by Amazon.com. It has sold 3,429,000 in the US as of July 2012.

The compilation's cover features stylized versions of the cover art for Collins' first six albums, the collection's primary sources of songs.

There are other greatest hits compilations of Phil Collins songs. A collection of Collins's more romantic songs were released on a two-disc compilation titled Love Songs: A Compilation... Old and New. 1999's Turn It On Again: The Hits, 2005's Platinum Collection and 2014's R-Kive were greatest hits collections by Collins' original group, Genesis. Most recently, Collins released the 2016 compilation The Singles as part of his "Take a Look at Me Now" album remaster series.

Track listing

...Hits – Standard edition

1. "Another Day in Paradise" Phil Collins ...But Seriously (1989) 5:22
2. "True Colors" Billy Steinberg, Tom Kelly previously unreleased 4:34
3. "Easy Lover" (with Philip Bailey) Phil Collins/Philip Bailey/Nathan East Chinese Wall (1984) 5:02
4. "You Can't Hurry Love" Holland-Dozier-Holland Hello, I Must Be Going! (1982) 2:52
5. "Two Hearts" Phil Collins, Lamont Dozier Buster (1988) 3:24
6. "I Wish It Would Rain Down" Phil Collins ...But Seriously (1989) 5:28
7. "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)" Phil Collins Against All Odds (1984) 3:25
8. "Something Happened on the Way to Heaven" Phil Collins, Daryl Stuermer ...But Seriously (1989) 4:51
9. "Separate Lives" (with Marilyn Martin) Stephen Bishop White Nights (1985) 4:06
10. "Both Sides of the Story" Phil Collins Both Sides (1993) 6:37
11. "One More Night" Phil Collins No Jacket Required (1985) 4:46
12. "Sussudio" Phil Collins No Jacket Required (1985) 4:21
13. "Dance into the Light" Phil Collins Dance into the Light (1996) 4:22
14. "A Groovy Kind of Love" Toni Wine, Carole Bayer Sager Buster (1988) 3:29
15. "In the Air Tonight" Phil Collins Face Value (1981) 5:30
16. "Take Me Home" Phil Collins No Jacket Required (1985) 5:52

Total length: 01:14:01

Track 1 features David Crosby on backing vocals.

Track 2 features Babyface on backing vocals, keyboard and drum programming, and Sheila E on percussion.

Track 3 features Philip Bailey on vocals.

Tracks 4, 11-13, 15 feature Daryl Stuermer on guitar.

Track 6 features Eric Clapton on guitar.

Tracks 8, 13 feature Nathan East on bass.

Track 9 features Marilyn Martin on vocals.

Track 16 features Peter Gabriel, Sting, and Helen Terry on backing vocals.

The original pressing of the album lists "Another Day in Paradise" with an incorrect running time of 6:22 and "One More Night" with a running time of 5:12. This is not the case for the Virgin pressing.

Peter Gabriel "So"

So is the fifth studio album by English singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel, released on 19 May 1986 by Charisma Records. After working on the soundtrack to the film Birdy (1984), producer Daniel Lanois was invited to remain at Gabriel's home during 1985 to work on his next solo project. Initial sessions for So consisted of Gabriel, Lanois and guitarist David Rhodes, although these grew to include a number of percussionists.

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.

Peter Gabriel "Peter Gabriel (Security)"

Peter Gabriel is the fourth album released by English rock musician Peter Gabriel. It is sometimes known by the title Security. A German-language version, entitled Deutsches Album, was also released.

The songs on the album cover a wide variety of subject matter. "The Rhythm of the Heat" is based on Carl Jung's experience while observing a group of African drummers. "San Jacinto" reflects on the fear and pain experienced by a Native American man who sees his culture overwhelmed by modern white society, its lyrics based on a story told to Gabriel by an Apache member. "Shock the Monkey", a meditation on jealousy, uses imagery of a primate to describe personal anxieties. "Lay Your Hands on Me" deals with a theme of healing, through trust, which is further explored on later albums. "The Family and the Fishing Net" is a song comparing a modern-day wedding to a voodoo sacrifice. "Wallflower" is about the treatment of political prisoners in Latin America during the 1980s.

Larry Fast, synthesizer performer on the album, mentioned during a presentation on Moog synthesizers that the working title for "The Rhythm of the Heat" was "Jung in Africa", the working title for "Shock the Monkey" was "Black Bush", and the working title for "Lay Your Hands on Me" was "93" – this was the number of the LinnDrum pattern used on the track.


In The South Bank Show's documentary of the album's recording, the working title for "I Have the Touch" was shown to be "Hands".

The album is an early full digital recording. Its instrumentation is mostly electronic with extensive sampling (through use of the then-new Fairlight CMI) and percussion. It was recorded at Gabriel's then-home, Ashcombe House in Somerset, England in 1981.


The album was remastered with most of Gabriel's catalogue in 2002.

As with his previous three albums, the album had no title other than Gabriel's name. In the United States and Canada, his new label Geffen Records issued the album, with Gabriel's reluctant agreement, with a Security sticker on top of the shrink-wrap to differentiate it from his previous releases, and this title was also printed on the labels. Whilst Gabriel provided the title himself, the album was officially known as Peter Gabriel in other territories. As a result, it is known by fans as Security or Peter Gabriel 4.


This was the last album by Gabriel to be titled Peter Gabriel until the 2008 compilation album released covermount into The Mail on Sunday.