Peter Gabriel (Melt)

Gabriel wrote the songs with a rhythm-first approach, demoing on an eight-track machine. Larry Fast introduced him to the PAiA Programmable Drum Set, and he later bought a Roland CR-78 drum machine. He brought in Phil Collins and Jerry Marotta as drummers and banned cymbals. Intruder is cited as the first prominent use of a gated reverb sound, which came out of experiments by Lillywhite, Collins and the engineer Hugh Padgham. The Fairlight CMI sampler appears in subtle ways, for example on Start.

Paul Weller of the Jam, recording in a nearby studio, played guitar on And Through the Wire. Robert Fripp played on No Self Control, I Don't Remember and Not One of Us, and Kate Bush sang backing vocals on No Self Control and Games Without Frontiers. The cover photograph is by Hipgnosis and shows the left side of Gabriel's face apparently melting. It was made by smearing Polaroid SX-70 pictures as they developed, which is why the album is called Melt.

Atlantic Records in the US declined the album. Gabriel recalled that Ahmet Ertegun asked what American people cared about a man in South Africa. Release was pushed back from an intended February 1980 while a new US deal was made with Mercury, and Geffen reissued the album in 1983. It became his first UK number one and reached number 22 on the Billboard 200, his highest position there to that point. A German-language version, Ein deutsches Album, followed on 27 June 1980.

Dave Marsh of Rolling Stone called it a tremendous record. In 1989 Rolling Stone ranked it number 46 among the best albums of the 1980s, and in 2018 Pitchfork placed it at number 125 on its list of the 200 best albums of that decade. Biko closes the record.