Superman, where are you now?

Literally the second I woke up this morning, I was thinking of Genesis (the band), specifically the Invisible Touch album.  I don't know if it was a dream I had - I remember basically nothing about any dreams and the very rare occasion I remember something about it when I wake up, I've forgotten it within a moment or so - but I had this vision of an interview, presumably with Phil Collins, about their reunion tour and he said (so I imagined) that he wasn't interested in making a new album but he'd go along with the other two, so long as it was a finale for their recording career.

Pretty specific for a dream or whatever that was.  Anyway, the first thing I did was look up the news and all I found was 'never say never' and there's no intention of a new Genesis album no matter how much the world needs one right now.  So I'm just writing this as a note, or maybe a prediction, who knows.  And I've had Genesis on the mind all day.

Currently I've only listened to the b-sides of the Invisible Touch single.  They are quite fun even if there's nothing major about them.  It is nice to hear music once in a while and since I'd never listened to these songs much, it's effectively new material for me.

Apparently the band has always focused on writing songs.  All former members are still relevant to whichever albums they were part of and they all get along.  By the time Phil had become drummer/lead singer/solo icon, it was agreed that they wouldn't bring anything they'd been working on for their individual works, it would all be stuff they made up for the band then and there.

I don't get why or how but their songs just sound like great pop music, however 'artsy' they tried to be.  I'm not a fan of the Peter Gabriel era because his singing just seems to overwhelm the music and I've never like that.  I would totally pay for copies of the instrumental tracks from those albums though.

Despite what I just said, I've never liked the title track that opens the album.  It's adequate as a pop song, I guess, but it does not grab me in the slightest.  "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" is much better although I'm surprisingly iffy on the synthesizers, those are so '1980s' in a bad way.  The lyrics are deliberately meaningless in a really fun way and the music is great as it builds to the ending.

"Land of Confusion" is great, presumably leftist but still entertaining.  I am getting annoyed by these non-real drums being played and assume they'll stay like that through the rest of the album.  "In Too Deep" is a nice ballad.  I like Collins' singing on this one, except for the high notes which just aren't him.

"Anything She Does" is fun, that's about all it has.  "Glow of the Night" is great.  The music, the lyrics, the dynamism, the singing, it shows off what a great band this was.  "The Last Domino" isn't as good but works very well as a second half of this epic.  The ending goes on a little long but that's the point of later songs on an album b-side.  "Throwing It All Away" is nice, a simple ballad that they did make periodically.  It's the third one on the album, that did used to be typical.

The final song starts out really techno and I'm not sure if that's a good or bad 1980s thing.  I don't even recognize the song despite hearing it many times before, there's no singing and the intro just keeps going.  After a while I realize that it's probably instrumental.  One thing about having an actual singer is that it makes the titles more memorable.  I'm deliberately not checking, but I think the track was named after Brazil.  Something like that anyway.  The bridge is all right, I do like the sense of epic-ness to the sound, although the 80s drums are still annoying.  And it just fades away and that's it.

And that was Genesis.  Why were they so popular again?