Games Without Frontiers (song)

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"Games Without Frontiers" is a hit 1980 single by Peter Gabriel, released on his third self-titled solo album. It features Kate Bush on backing vocals and became his first UK Top 10 hit, charting at #4. It ties with 1986's Sledgehammer as his highest-charting song.

[edit] Title and lyrics

The song's title comes from a European game show, Jeux Sans Frontières, that featured teams competing for prizes while dressed in bizarre costumes. The British version of the show was called It's a Knockout, a phrase that also appears in the song. The teams represented towns and cities from each country, so the games had an inevitable element of nationalism. While some games were simple races, others allowed one team to obstruct another.

The lyrics are seen as a critique of nationalism and war, which the song portrays as essentially childish. The name Lin Tai Yu, which appears in the song, belongs to a character from the classic Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber. Chiang Ching, another name mentioned, is an alternative transliteration of Jiang Qing, the wife of Chairman Mao and a leader of the Cultural Revolution, though Gabriel may have been referring to Chiang Ching-kuo, the son of Chiang Kai-shek, who was president of Taiwan at the time the song was written. Additionally, the end of the first verse refers to Hitler and Enrico Fermi: "Suki plays with Leo, Sacha plays with Brit; Adolf builds a bonfire, Enrico plays with it."

The tag line of the song, "Games without frontiers, war without tears" is a comment on the sublimation of the rivalries within Europe, caused by centuries of war, in a meaningless game.

The album version of the song includes the line "Whistling tunes we piss on the coons in the jungle" before the second chorus. This was replaced for the single release with a more radio-friendly repeat of the line "Whistling tunes we're kissing baboons in the jungle" from the first chorus.

[edit] Music

This song features the PAiA Electronics Programmable Drum Set, widely considered the first programmable drum machine (it is not the Roland CR-78, used by many of Gabriel's former Genesis bandmates on both Genesis and solo albums). It also features the Moog Model 15 small analog modular system for many of the synthesizer sounds. One thing to take note of: the synthetic drums at the end (close) of the song (particularly the notable "filter sweep noise blip" accompanying the snare) are not part of the PAiA drum machine.