Abacab

The title is the song structure: A-B-A-C-A-B. That’s the whole concept.

By 1981, Genesis was tired of being a prog band. Peter Gabriel was long gone, Phil Collins was fully in charge, and they were ready to make something that didn’t require a flowchart to understand. So they wrote a song, recorded it with full verses and a proper narrative, and then decided all of that was boring.

They kept the instrumentals. They threw away everything else.

What remains is glorious nonsense—wordless vocals, stuttering synths, a drum pattern that sounds like Collins is fighting his own kit. The verses are just syllables. The chorus is just a feeling. The whole thing moves like it’s late for an appointment and can’t be bothered to explain where it’s going.

I love Genesis, but I didn’t always. Like a lot of people my age, I knew Phil Collins as the “Sussudio” guy, the soft rock balladeer who showed up in every ’80s movie soundtrack. It took years to work backward through the catalog and discover that this same person once played drums on 23-minute concept pieces about hermaphrodites and apocalyptic lambs.

“Abacab” is the bridge. It’s art rock that wants to be pop, or pop that can’t stop being weird. The guitar solo in the middle section—Tony Banks on keys, Mike Rutherford on bass, the three of them locked into a groove that’s simultaneously funky and progressive—that’s the old Genesis refusing to die.

They named the song after its structure because the structure was all that mattered.

Sometimes the scaffolding is the building.