#petergabriel

"Peter Gabriel with Iggy Pop and Some World Music Dudes," illustration by Danny Hellman for Tower Records' PULSE Magazine, 1996

Top 100 Best Music Videos of All-Time

21. SLEDGEHAMMER

PETER GABRIEL

1986

The "Sledgehammer" music video was commissioned by Tessa Watts at Virgin Records, directed by Stephen R. Johnson and produced by Adam Whittaker. Aardman Animations and the Brothers Quay provided claymation, pixilation, and stop motion animation that gave life to images in the song. Johnson and Gabriel wanted the music video to be satisfying on repeat viewings and set out to accomplish this by incorporating multiple ideas that were both "inventive and funny". They spent a couple of weeks generating ideas and later invited Brothers Quay and Aardman Animations to develop the music video.

Gabriel said that the music video was shot frame by frame. For one scene, Gabriel lay under a sheet of glass for 16 hours with raw fish. "It took a lot of hard work," Gabriel recalled. "I was thinking at the time, 'If anyone wants to try and copy this video, good luck to them.'" For each frame of a ten-second sequence, clouds were painted across Gabriel's face to create the illusion of moving clouds.