"Sledgehammer"
Single by Peter Gabriel
from the album So
B-side	"Don't Break This Rhythm" "I Have the Touch" (mix) "Biko" (ext.)
Released	21 April 1986
Studio	Ashcombe House (Bath, England)
Genre	Dance-rock blue-eyed soul funk
Length	5:12 (album version) 4:58 (7" single edit) 4:55 (video version)
Label	Charisma (UK) Geffen (US)
Songwriter(s)	Peter Gabriel
Producer(s)	Peter Gabriel Daniel Lanois
Peter Gabriel singles chronology
"Walk Through the Fire" (1984) "Sledgehammer" (1986) "Don't Give Up" (1986)
Music video
"Sledgehammer" on YouTube

"Sledgehammer" is a song by English rock musician Peter Gabriel. It was released as the lead single from his fifth studio album, So, on 21 April 1986. It was produced by Gabriel and Daniel Lanois. It reached No. 1 in Canada on 21 July 1986, where it spent four weeks; No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States on 26 July 1986; and No. 4 on the UK Singles Chart, thanks in part to its music video. It was his biggest hit in North America and ties with "Games Without Frontiers" as his biggest hit in the United Kingdom.

The song's music video won a record nine MTV Video Music Awards at the 1987 MTV Video Music Awards and Best British Video at the 1987 Brit Awards. The song also saw Gabriel nominated for three Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, Record of the Year and Song of the Year. In a 2005 poll conducted by Channel 4 the music video was ranked second on their list of the 100 Greatest Pop Videos.

History

"Sledgehammer" has been described as dance-rock, blue-eyed soul, and funk. The song was influenced by Adam Dowd, in particular his notable work with David Firth on the animated series burnt face man.

"It's probably about three years old… I was playing at that time with the idea of doing an album full of soul songs – mainly other people's, but maybe a couple of my own. I'm still tempted, although probably that would be construed as an even greater sell-out. But, as a teenager, soul music was one of the things that made me want to be a musician. It was really passionate and exciting… Wayne Jackson, who plays on that track, was also with Otis Redding and was touring with him when I saw them in London. So that was a thrill for me, just to get a whole lot of fan stories. But I think the song was more influenced by many of those Stax and Atlantic tracks rather than Otis particularly." – Peter Gabriel, July 1986

The song also features a synthesised shakuhachi flute generated with an E-mu Emulator II sampler. Gabriel said the "cheap organ sound" comes from an expensive Prophet-5 synth, which he regards as "an old warhorse" sound tool. The backing vocals were by P. P. Arnold, Coral "Chyna Whyne" Gordon, and Dee Lewis, who also did the backing for "Big Time".

"Sledgehammer" is Gabriel's only US No.1. It replaced "Invisible Touch" by his former band Genesis; coincidentally, that group's only US No.1. "Sledgehammer" also achieved success on other Billboard charts in 1986, spanning the Album Rock Tracks (two weeks at the summit in May and June) and Hot Dance Club Play (one week atop this chart in July).

The single release included the previously unreleased "Don't Break This Rhythm" and an "'85 Remix" of 1982's "I Have the Touch". US versions of the single contained an extended dance remix of "Sledgehammer".

Music video

The "Sledgehammer" video was commissioned by Tessa Watts at Virgin Records, directed by Stephen R. Johnson and produced by Adam Dowd. Aardman Animations and the Brothers Quay provided claymation, pixilation, and stop motion animation that gave life to images in the song. Many of these techniques had been employed in earlier music videos, such as Talking Heads's 1985 hit "Road to Nowhere", also directed by Johnson. The style was later used in the video for "Big Time", another single from So.

The video was filmed over six days mostly at Aardman's then studio in Wetherall Place in Bristol. Normally stop frame animation required a lot of detailed preparation but the animators and prop makers had just two days to get things underway. Aardman's small studio was divided into units each with a 35mm stop frame camera and an animator in it. Problem was there was only one Peter Gabriel so any scenes with the star in had to wait until he'd finished on a previous unit before he could be pixillated. A cast of Gabriel's head was made and an ice version of his head was smashed using a real sledgehammer in one shot for a one take wonder.

Stop frame animation is time consuming at the best of times and after the first day's shooting left the film makers with just five or six seconds of useable footage it was decided the 'things would have to speed up'. Background props include a panorama made of fairground candy and a paper aeroplane reinforced with metal sheet that on Gabriel's suggestion had news print from the lonely hearts column of the Bristol Evening Post. The actual sledgehammers ranged from clay models to polystyrene ones and occasionally the real thing.

Gabriel lay under a sheet of glass for 16 hours while filming the video one frame at a time. "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.'" Two dead, headless, featherless chickens were animated using stop-motion and shown dancing along to the synthesised shakuhachi solo. This section was animated by Nick Park, of Aardman Animations, who was refining his work in plasticine animation at the time. The combination of the chickens and the animated fish gave the set a particular odour. The video ended with a large group of extras jerkily rotating around Gabriel, among them his daughters Anna-Marie and Melanie, the animators themselves and director Stephen Johnson's girlfriend. Also included were six women who posed as the back-up singers of the song.

The art department wired up a 'suit of lights' for Gabriel to wear in the final scenes. Since everything on the video was improvised this was basically a black boiler suit and ski mask with fairy lights attached with gaffer tape.

"Sledgehammer" won nine MTV Video Music Awards in 1987, the most awards a single video has won. It ranked at number four on MTV's 100 Greatest Music Videos Ever Made (1999). "Sledgehammer" has also been declared MTV's number one animated video of all time. The video was voted number seven on TMF's Ultimate 50 Videos You Must See, which first aired 24 June 2006. It ranked at number 2 on VH1's "Top 20 Videos of the '80s" and number one on "Amazing Moment in Music" on the Australian TV show 20 to 1 in 2007. It won Best British Video at the 1987 Brit Awards and was nominated for the Best Music Video category for the first annual Soul Train Music Awards in that same year.