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The Barry Williams Show
"The Barry Williams Show" is a song by English rock musician Peter Gabriel from his 2002 album, Up.[2] The song was released as the album's lead single and charted in various European countries. In 2003, the song received a Grammy nomination for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, but it lost to Bruce Springsteen's "The Rising".[3] BackgroundGabriel wrote "The Barry Williams Show" as a commentary on TV culture to explore "the difference between the media persona and the real persona...how dysfunctional behaviour can be turned into profitable entertainment."[4] He characterised the song as a "fable about reality TV", which he compared to junk food, saying that "you have an appetite for it, but it doesn't make you feel very good at the end of it."[5] When deciding on the name for the talk show host, Gabriel wanted something that sounded as if "it lived in TV land". He went through several different options before settling on the name Barry Williams.[5] However, he was unaware that several notable individuals also possessed the same name, including a rugby player and an actor, the latter of whom starred in The Brady Bunch. Upon learning of the song's existence, the Barry Williams from The Brady Bunch questioned why he was invoked in the song, so Gabriel explained to Williams that the song's lyrical content did not relate to him.[6] Gabriel was instead looking for a name that worked well musically; he was aware of the Brady Bunch, but had failed to make the connection between the show and the actor.[5] Williams later commented that "I guess it's just an English name. Or maybe I'm becoming so well known that I'm invading the subconscious of different people."[6] The drums on "The Barry Williams Show" were a composite of several tracks played by Manu Katché, which engineer Richard Chappell looped and treated through a sampler.[7] Ged Lynch also provided additional drums and percussion, with the rhythmic elements possessing a metallic quality. Some electronic processing was applied to the vocals during the verses and outro, but these effects are absent during the pre-chorus.[4] Prior to its release as a single, Gabriel reviewed the lyrics to ensure that radio stations would not find the song too controversial, although Gabriel believed that none of the lyrics would have been out of place in a Sunday newspaper.[8] The lyrics detail the talk show host's desire for "dysfunctional excess" to maintain high viewership ratings.[9] When Virgin Records attached a fourth track to the single, "The Barry Williams Show" became ineligible for the UK singles chart and instead qualified for the budget albums chart, where it peaked at number four on the week dated 21 September 2002.[10] ArtworkThe cover art uses an image taken by Paul Thorel titled Regardez Madame! L'Escargot Vola!. It was designed by Marc Bessant, who worked with Dilly Gent to find visual material that matched Gabriel's lyrics. Bessant was unaware of Thorel's work, but he thought that ''Regardez Madame! L'Escargot Vola! effectively addressed the themes embedded in the song.[8] The image features a distorted image of a woman's face, with only her right eye in focus.[4] Thorel captured the image using digital photography and imposed scan lines on the woman's face. He said that the artwork reflected the idea of "human beings voluntarily lost/immersed" in reality television and the breakdown of "transmission and reception".[8] Music videoThe music video for "The Barry Williams Show" was directed by Sean Penn and stars Christopher McDonald as the fictional television host. Barry Williams from The Brady Bunch makes a cameo in the video as one of the audience members.[11] On 6 September 2002, the music video premiered on AOL; it was launched on Netscape the following day.[12] The video was aired on VH1 and was the 28th most played video played on the network for the week ending 6 October 2002.[13] The video shows Williams walking to the studio where people recognize him and ask for his autograph. He enters the studio and prepares for the show as the guests arrive, via limo, and are prepped in makeup chairs. Williams hosts the show in a Jerry Springer-esque fashion, with the guests getting agitated and making a spectacle of themselves. The audience and guests suddenly begin bleeding through their orifices (as sweat and tears) but are completely oblivious to it. A fan enters the backstage area and begins to rub some of the blood on herself. Eventually, the blood fills the entire studio as a raging storm with Williams and two show girls stuck on a raft. Williams falls off and sinks into the blood as the fan swims to him. Throughout the video Peter Gabriel, adorned in black, sings in front of the images displayed behind him. It is implied that he is Williams' ruthless producer.[11] Live performancesGabriel performed "The Barry Williams Show" on his 2002–2003 Growing Up Tour. During these performances, Gabriel took on the role of a talk show host and would preface the song by telling the audience "Some people say, you are what you eat. I say – you are what you watch – and you watch The Barry Williams Show".[14][15] Gabriel was equipped with a camera on this song, which he directed at members of his touring band and the audience.[16] He then projected their faces onto a circular cloth screen that was suspended above the stage.[14] Additional footage was filmed by a stagehand, who held another camera.[17] These images were then projected onto a white fabric curtain positioned in the center of the stage.[15][17] Gabriel's camera was attached to a dolly, which was connected to a scaffolding that descended to the ground from a large egg-shaped fixture.[18] A fabric was displayed from the lighting rig, which pierced through the second stage.[17] The scaffolding supported a platform, which Gabriel performed on as he moved the camera around the stage's perimeter.[17][19] A nine minute version of the song, taken from a May 2003 live performance at the Fila Forum in Milan, was included on both the video and audio versions of Growing Up: Live.[9] Critical reception"The Barry Williams Show" was panned by reviewers. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic felt that "The Barry Williams Show" was out of place on Up and characterized the song as "ham-fisted" and "wrong-headed".[2] Scott Schinder of Entertainment Weekly thought that the song was a "muddled stab at social criticism".[20] Chris Nickson of CMJ magazine dismissed "The Barry Williams Show' as a throwaway single.[21] Writing for PopMatters, Andy Kerman identified "The Barry Williams Show" as the only "embarrassment" on Up and believed that it reflected poor judgment to release the song as the album's lead single. He further commented that the song portrays a "yesterday's-news portrait of an unscrupulous daytime talk show host, with quaintly old-fashioned synth horns and a big goofy chorus that tries to be rousing but only succeeds in being vapid."[22] Chris Ott of Pitchfork said that the song "is both more egregious and revolting than his last album's uncomfortably obvious single, 'Kiss That Frog'."[23] Alexis Petridis of The Guardian believed that the song's lyrics and music sounded outdated, saying that it was "hardly cutting-edge satire" to ridicule Jerry Springer. He also dismissed the "Nine Inch Nails-influenced squalls" as unoriginal.[24] Peter Menocal of Kludge lambasted the song as "nothing short of a joke with its failed attempt to fuse funk and satire. It's a travel back to a time in music we should never try to get stuck in or revive in any sense of the word."[25] Andy Greene of Rolling Stone called "The Barry Williams Show" the worst song on Up "and quite possibly the worst song he's ever released going all the way back to the earliest days of Genesis in 1967."[11] Some publications were more positive on "The Barry Williams Show". In his album review of Up, David Lynch of The Austin Chronicle said that the song both "poppy" and "accessible".[26] Writing for Salon, Jonathan Kiefer thought that Gabriel portrayed the titular talkshow host as an "endearingly contemptible tabloid TV sleaze-monger" and found the song to be "bitterly funny and certainly on target."[27] Writing for Record Journal, Allan Sculley thought that the "Barry Williams Show" was a "chunky tune with its share of ear-grabbing moments".[28]Larry Flick of Billboard described the song as an "acerbic take on the current spate of reality TV programs and their eroding effect on humanity."[29] Track listing
PersonnelCredits from the Up liner notes.[30]
Charts
Awards and nominations
References
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