Sometimes you have to feel bad for the songs at the back end of an album’s track listing. Listeners who are short on time may never actually listen to them. Artists understand this and often “hide” the tracks they like the least at the end of an album.
Genesis was not apologetic about their album closers. If anything, they frequently saved their most impactful performances for an album’s conclusion, which makes the experience of listening to their albums all the way through especially gratifying. Their album closers are among their most beloved songs, and the band clearly thinks well of them, too. Of the 15 songs they have played most often in their live shows, five are the final tracks of their respective albums. That makes it difficult to single out their very best album closers, and in spotlighting five most satisfying ones, some fan favorites wind up getting snubbed.
With apologies to “Follow You, Follow Me” and several other closers loved by the band and fans alike, here are the five Genesis songs that are most likely to have you start the album all over again.
5. “The Knife” from Trespass (1970)
Not only is “The Knife” one of Genesis’ most rousing album closers, it is the best song they recorded before Phil Collins and Steve Hackett joined the group prior to the recording of Nursery Cryme (1971). Trespass was Genesis’ first foray into progressive rock, and there are enough high points on this uneven album to make it worth listening through to its final track. Both lyrically and musically, “The Knife” has a heaviness and earthiness that Genesis rarely matched again over their following 13 albums. Part of what makes a great album closer is when it gives the impression that there is no possible way the band could top the energy and drama of the song. Genesis gives their all on “The Knife,” and it leaves the listener spent, too.
4. “Los Endos” from A Trick of the Tail (1976)
A Trick of the Tail was Genesis’ first album without Peter Gabriel, and it silenced the doubters who wondered if the band could thrive without their original frontman. As a quartet, they showed they could still pack an album with compelling songs and dynamic and virtuosic playing. At just under six minutes, “Los Endos” is actually on the short side for a Genesis closer, but the instrumental is long enough to take listeners on a thrilling ride. Collins makes this dynamo of a closer even more impactful by borrowing a couple of lines from another monster album-ender, “Supper’s Ready” from Foxtrot. Over a reprise of “Squonk,” Collins utters what are perhaps Gabriel’s most iconic lyrics from his Genesis days, in reverse order from the original: There’s an angel standing in the sun / Freed to get back home.
3. “Duke’s Travels”/”Duke’s End” from Duke (1980)
Technically two tracks that run into one another, “Duke’s Travels” and “Duke’s End” were initially intended to be part of a side-long suite. Part of what makes this such a satisfying finale to Duke is the contrast it creates with the rest of the album. For the most part, the tale of Albert—Duke’s central character—is a sad one, and the soundtrack to the story is fittingly melancholy. By the time we get to “Duke’s Travels,” Tony Banks’ loping keyboard melody feels downright triumphant.
Then, as Genesis’ closers often do, “Duke’s Travels” slowly keeps building until it feels transcendent. When they recycle the reprise device used on “Los Endos” by launching into even harder-driving versions of “Behind the Lines” and “Turn It On Again,” it’s so well executed that it doesn’t matter that we have heard this pattern before.
2. “Cinema Show”/”Aisle of Plenty” from Selling England by the Pound (1973)
The closing pair of tracks to Selling England by the Pound follow a similar path to that of the Duke closers, creating a slow build from a quiet intro to a tuneful middle section to a frenetic burst of energy. Banks’ five-minute keyboard solo that leads into “Aisle of Plenty” just may be his finest—and given his body of work, that is really saying something. Whereas Duke zigs by concluding with the fiery “Duke’s End,” Selling England by the Pound zags with the spooky “Aisle of Plenty.” It’s downright eerie to hear a distressed Gabriel singing out prices of random grocery items over the chilly sound of Banks’ mellotron.
1. “Supper’s Ready” from Foxtrot (1972)
This 23-minute suite is widely considered to be Genesis’ crowning achievement. Though Gabriel’s story of a couple’s surreal journey is hard to follow, the band’s progression through the song’s seven movements takes listeners on a breathtaking adventure. The first 15-and-a-half minutes have more than their share of sonic peaks and valleys, but it hits another gear for the penultimate section, “Apocalypse in 9/8 (Co-starring the Delicious Talents of Gabble Ratchet).” While it’s the melding of the five members’ parts that creates this section’s magic, it’s also worthwhile to focus on Collins’ astonishing playing (especially when considering he was just 21 when he recorded this). Then Genesis ends the album with the hair-raising final movement “As Sure as Eggs is Eggs (Aching Men’s Feet),” in which Gabriel begins the cathartic final verse with There’s an angel standing in the sun.
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