Scratch My Back
Encyclopedia
Singles
Gabriel originally intended to release Scratch My Back and I'll Scratch Yours simultaneously. However, as completion of the latter dragged out, it was instead decided to release a series of double A-sided singles with one song from each album every new full moon during 2010 on iTunesITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
. The first, "The Book of Love" — Gabriel's cover of a Magnetic Fields
The Magnetic Fields
The Magnetic Fields is the principal creative outlet of singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt...
song, together with "Not One of Us" — Stephin Merritt
Stephin Merritt
Stephin Merritt is an American singer-songwriter based in Los Angeles , best known as the principal singer and songwriter in the band The Magnetic Fields...
's (The Magnetic Fields' frontman) cover of a Peter Gabriel song, was released on 30 January 2010. Gabriel's version of "The Boy in the Bubble" coupled with Paul Simon
Paul Simon
Paul Frederic Simon is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.Simon is best known for his success, beginning in 1965, as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached number one on the US singles...
's version of "Biko
Biko (song)
"Biko" is a protest song by British rock musician Peter Gabriel. The song was included on Gabriel's third album, Peter Gabriel . It is about Steve Biko, a noted black South African anti-apartheid activist. Biko had been arrested by the South African police in late August 1977...
" was the second, released on 28 February 2010. The third in the series, Gabriel's take on "Flume" paired with Bon Iver's seven-minute long version of "Come Talk to Me" was released on 30 March 2010.
On 17 April 2010 "The Book of Love" / "Not One of Us" as well as "Flume" / "Come Talk to Me" were also released on 7" vinyl to independent record stores.
Personnel
- Peter Gabriel – vocalsSingingSinging is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
, pianoPianoThe piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
on "Flume" - John Metcalfe – arrangerArrangementThe American Federation of Musicians defines arranging as "the art of preparing and adapting an already written composition for presentation in other than its original form. An arrangement may include reharmonization, paraphrasing, and/or development of a composition, so that it fully represents...
- The London Scratch Orchestra – violinViolinThe violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
s, violaViolaThe viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...
s, celloCelloThe cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
s, double bassDouble bassThe double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
es, fluteFluteThe flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
, bassoonBassoonThe bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...
, trumpetTrumpetThe trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
s, hornsHorn (instrument)The horn is a brass instrument consisting of about of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player ....
, tromboneTromboneThe trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
s, bass trombones, piano - Melanie Gabriel – vocals on "The Book of Love"
- Jason RebelloJason RebelloJason Rebello is a British jazz pianist, currently part of Sting's live and studio band, who has recorded a handful of albums under his own name. His debut album, A Clearer View was produced by Wayne Shorter....
– piano on "The Power of the Heart" - The Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, OxfordChrist Church Cathedral, OxfordChrist Church Cathedral is the cathedral of the diocese of Oxford, which consists of the counties of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire. It is also, uniquely, the chapel of Christ Church, a college of the University of Oxford.-History:...
– choirChoirA choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...
on "My Body Is a Cage" - Eli Hibit – Backing Rhythm Guitar on "Street Spirit (Fade Out)"
Reception
Scratch My Back received generally positive reviews from most music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, it received an averageWeighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...
score of 67 based on 21 reviews.
Scratch My Back was album of the month in the March 2010 issue of Mojo. Reviewer Mat Snow writes: "He [Gabriel] and his top-of-the-range collaborators (...) have created an album of great insight into the untapped potential of familiar songs, a profound re-imagining made manifest in an orchestral soundworld as rich and thrilling as ever recorded at Air (...)". He gave special mention to the reinterpretations of David Bowie's "Heroes" ("the songs underlying despair rises to the top"), Paul Simon's "The Boy in the Bubble" ("the song it might have been had not the writer been so determined in 1986 to bring the joys of South African township jive to the Western pop charts") and Talking Heads' "Listening Wind" ("Gabriel shines a soft light into the song's inner desolation"). On the downside Snow describes the version of Lou Reed's "The Power of the Heart" as "a misstep" and Randy Newman's "I Think It's Going to Rain Today" as "superfluous". He concludes the review on a positive note by saying: "An album to make you happy feeling sad, Scratch My Back gets better with each play; it might just turn out to be the best surprise birthday present of the year."
In Metro
Metro (Associated Metro Limited)
Metro is a free daily newspaper in the United Kingdom published by Associated Newspapers Ltd . It is available from Monday to Friday each week on many public transport services across the United Kingdom.-History:The paper was launched in London in 1999, and can now be found in 14 UK urban centres...
, Arwa Haider awarded the album 3 stars out of 5 and commented: "Its most impressive quality is sensitivity; these are elegant orchestral arrangements … It’s sporadically successful; Gabriel saps the life from Paul Simon’s The Boy in the Bubble and somehow over-eggs Arcade Fire’s My Body Is a Cage" and concluded "this is exceptionally classy karaoke."
In The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Jon Pareles wrote: "Covers albums don’t get any more idiosyncratic or high concept
High concept
High concept is a term used to refer to an artistic work that can be easily described by a succinctly stated premise.-Terminology:High concept narratives are typically characterised by an over-arching "what if?" scenario that acts as a catalyst for the following events...
than Scratch My Back."
Pitchfork Media reviewer Mark Richardson was less enthusiastic: "Every song on Scratch My Back, regardless of its original tone or meaning, is flattened out and turned into this one melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
tic and depressing thing (...)"; although the album "sounds earnest [and] professional", it consists of "ponderous, dull, and ultimately pointless versions of songs that sound much better elsewhere."
Chart performance
| Chart (2010) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Austrian Albums Chart | 11 |
| Belgian (Flanders) Albums Chart Ultratop Ultratop is an organization which generates and publishes the official record charts in Belgium, and it is also the name of most of those charts... |
13 |
| Belgian (Wallonia) Albums Chart | 1 |
| Canadian Albums Chart | 2 |
| Czech Republic Albums Chart | 3 |
| Danish Albums Chart | 15 |
| Dutch Albums Chart | 10 |
| Finnish Albums Chart | 41 |
| French Albums Chart | 4 |
| German Albums Chart | 2 |
| Irish Albums Chart Irish Albums Chart The Irish Albums Chart is the Irish music industry standard albums popularity chart issued weekly by the Irish Recorded Music Association and compiled on its behalf by Chart-Track. Chart rankings are based on sales, which are compiled through over-the-counter retail data captured electronically... |
22 |
| Italian Albums Chart | 3 |
| Mexican Albums Chart | 80 |
| Norwegian Albums Chart | 11 |
| New Zealand Albums Chart | 15 |
| Portuguese Albums Chart | 13 |
| Spanish Albums Chart | 11 |
| Swedish Albums Chart | 5 |
| Swiss Albums Chart | 3 |
| UK Albums Chart UK Albums Chart The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart... |
12 |
| U.S. Billboard 200 Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists... |
26 |
| U.S. Independent Albums Independent Albums The Billboard Independent Albums is a chart of the highest-selling independent music albums and extended plays in the United States, compiled by Nielsen SoundScan and published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is used to list artists who are not signed to major labels... |
2 |
| U.S. Rock Albums | 3 |
Release history
| Region | Date | Record label |
|---|---|---|
| Australia Australia Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area... |
12 February 2010 | Real World Records Real World Records Real World Records is a record label started in 1989 by Peter Gabriel to record and produce world music.-Overview:The label grew up alongside the success of the WOMAD festivals and Peter Gabriel's exploration of music from other cultures, and helped push world music into the general public's... /Virgin Records |
| Germany Germany Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate... |
||
| United Kingdom United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages... |
15 February 2010 | |
| Mainland Europe | ||
| Canada Canada Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean... |
16 February 2010 | Universal Music |
| United States United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district... |
2 March 2010 | Real World Records |
| Brazil Brazil Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people... |
15 March 2010 | EMI EMI The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major... |
External links
- Live performance of "Heroes" for CNNCNNCable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...