Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel

About

The second track off of Peter Gabriel’s 1986 album So. It also provided Gabriel with his only #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 (peaking in July 1986). The song is centered around Gabriel trying to woo someone, and uses a LOT of sexual innuendo. The titular sledgehammer is a pretty obvious phallic symbol. “Sledgehammer” was heavily influenced by 60s soul – specifically songs released by the Stax label – to the point that Peter Gabriel hired Wayne Jackson of Stax’s Memphis Horns to lead his horn section for this song. The music video for this song was influential, and is MTV’s most played music video to date. The video is almost entirely stop-motion animation, created with the help of Aardman Animations, the company that would later make the Wallace and Gromit films. The music video was also used in the Atari Jaguar CD game “Vid Grid”, a sliding puzzle game where you must put the music video together.