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Don’t Give Up
lyrics by Peter Gabriel music by Peter Gabriel performed by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush (and various others) release date: October 20, 1986
[Verse 1: Peter Gabriel] In this proud land we grew up strong We were wanted all along I was taught to fight, taught to win I never thought I could fail No fight left or so it seems I am a man whose dreams have all deserted I’ve changed my face, I’ve changed my name But no one wants you when you lose
[Chorus: Kate Bush] Don’t give up ’cause you have friends Don’t give up, you’re not beaten yet Don’t give up, I know you can make it good
[Verse 2: Peter Gabriel] Though I saw it all around Never thought that I could be affected Thought that we’d be last to go It is so strange the way things turn Drove the night toward my home The place that I was born, on the lakeside As daylight broke, I saw the earth The trees had burned down to the ground
[Chorus: Kate Bush] Don’t give up, you still have us Don’t give up, we don’t need much of anything Don’t give up, ’cause somewhere there’s a place Where we belong
[Bridge: Kate Bush & Peter Gabriel] Rest your head, you worry too much It’s gonna be alright When times get rough, you can fall back on us Don’t give up, please don’t give up Got to walk out of here, I can’t take any more Gonna stand on that bridge, keep my eyes down below Whatever may come and whatever may go That river’s flowing, that river’s flowing
[Verse 3: Peter Gabriel] Moved on to another town Tried hard to settle down For every job, so many men So many men no-one needs
[Chorus: Kate Bush] Don’t give up ’cause you have friends Don’t give up, you’re not the only one Don’t give up, no reason to be ashamed Don’t give up, you still have us Don’t give up now, we’re proud of who you are Don’t give up, you know it’s never been easy Don’t give up ’cause I believe there’s a place There’s a place where we belong
[Outro: Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush] (Don’t give up, don’t give up, don’t give up) (Don’t give up, don’t give up, don’t give up) (Don’t give up, don’t give up, don’t give up) (Don’t give up, don’t give up, don’t give up) (Don’t give up, don’t give up, don’t give up…)
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I have always wondered what inspired this song. Gabriel is British, and obviously there have been some occasional hard times in British history, but those hard times have been relatively few (compared to much of the world) – and the ones that come to mind don’t fit well within his lifetime very well (WW2, Mordred, Jacobite Rebellion, Voldemort.)
So I did as I do and I looked this one up. Lo and behold, Mr. Gabriel was singing about an event from across the pond that took place where I live here in the U.S. This is a song about the Dust Bowl.
In the present day, the Dust Bowl is a 1930s themed bowling alley in the hipster district of Oklahoma City. Just under 100 years ago, it was a cataclysmic ecosystem destroying, multi-year drought induced dust storm that hit and obliterated the middle of the United States.
If you drive through rural Oklahoma, you’ll still see abandoned old wooden houses that date back to this era. I always notice. I think if your name is Dusty, and you’re from the rural part of a state that is best known for suffering the Dust Bowl a few decades before you were born, maybe you’re just ore attuned to Dust Bowl era damage.
The devastation led to a mass migration of Oklahomans (Okies) and others toward California, where they hoped to find work and a better life. A lot of my relatives ended up in California for this reason. This is the event that inspired John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.
But for my money, and with apologies to Steinbeck, I prefer the Dust Bowl inspired art of Peter Gabriel. (more via wiki)
“Don’t Give Up” is a song written by the English rock musician Peter Gabriel and recorded as a duet with English singer Kate Bush for Gabriel’s fifth solo studio albumSo (1986). An edited version was released as the third single from the album in the UK on 20 October 1986 and as the fourth single in the US in March 1987. It spent eleven weeks in the UK Top 75 chart in 1986, peaking at number nine.
In 1987 the song won an Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically.
Background
The song was inspired by the Depression-era photographs of Dorothea Lange, showing poverty-stricken Americans in Dust Bowl conditions. Gabriel saw Lange’s images in a book entitled In This Proud Land (1973) and felt that a song on this topic was appropriate. He also cited unemployment in the United Kingdom under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher as further inspiration.
Gabriel composed lyrics about a man whose unemployment causes stress in his domestic relationship. He had watched a TV program about the consequences of unemployment on family life, and said that it “played into my own problems at that time. I think a combination of that and domestic difficulties.” The verses, sung by Gabriel, describe the man’s feelings of isolation, loneliness and despair; the choruses, sung by Bush, offer words of hope and encouragement. The title was something that Gabriel’s former wife, Jill, would say when he was experiencing emotional difficulties. “When he gets into very deep depressions, I am always saying don’t give up. I think the song is very much about us.”
Recording
Initial ideas for the song date back to 1981 during the recording of his fourth self-titled solo album, which took place at Ashcombe House, Somerset. Gabriel built the song around a tom-tom pattern with a three-against-four polyrhythm that he programmed onto a drum machine. He tuned the programmed tom-toms to different pitches with the intention of having Tony Levin emulate the part on the bass guitar. Halfway through recording, Levin placed a nappy behind his strings to dampen the sound and achieve a softer tone. Levin had packed the nappies in his gig bag for his two-month-old daughter because he mistakenly thought that the products were not sold in the UK. Richard Tee also contributed piano, in the song’s bridge, to infuse a gospel feel into the section. Gabriel attempted a few variations of the ending section, but eventually settled on an arrangement that he was satisfied with.
Gabriel developed the “don’t give up” lyric and the verses early on, although he did not finalize the chorus until a few months after the melody was solidified. He did not conceive the song as a duet and originally sang all of the choruses himself, but later said that “the story would work better with a man–woman relationship.” The initial demos of “Don’t Give Up” were around seven minutes in duration, although Gabriel later decided to edit the song down.
I always over-record, because again it’s a classic situation in the studio. The band suddenly starts rehearsing at the end of the song and this sort of magic groove starts coming—and then the tape runs out. So I always make sure we’ve got five minutes spare, so if something does happen, if the band takes off, then you can get it. And then perhaps you’ll come back and try to pull some of that energy into the earlier sections.
— Peter Gabriel
Gabriel wrote the song from a reference point of American roots music and approached country singer Dolly Parton to sing it with him. However, Parton turned it down, so his friend Kate Bush took her place. Gabriel said that Bush was originally nervous about participating, but delivered an “excellent” vocal take on her second attempt. David Stallbaumer, who served as an assistant engineer for the sessions, thought that Bush’s contributions improved the song “almost instantaneously”.
Music videos
Two music videos were created for the song. The first, by Godley & Creme, is a single take of Gabriel and Bush, as they sing, in an embrace, while the sun behind them enters a total eclipse and re-emerges. Of the shoot, Gabriel remarked, “There are worse ways of earning a living.” According to Gabriel, Godley & Creme suggested the idea of Bush and Gabriel holding each other for the entire video. The video was featured in the final broadcast of the channel Europa TV in November 1986.
A second video, directed by Jim Blashfield and produced by Melissa Marsland in 1988, features the singers’ faces superimposed over film of a town and its people in disrepair.
Legacy
In a 2014 interview, Elton John attributed his sobriety to the song, in particular the lyric from Bush, “Rest your head. You worry too much. It’s going to be all right. When times get rough you can fall back on us. Don’t give up.” He states, “she [Bush] played a big part in my rebirth. That record helped me so much.”
Similarly, actor Matthew Perry (who struggled with substance and alcohol addiction) was enamored with the song; it was played at his funeral in November 2023 and was referenced in signed copies of his autobiography Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, which was released a year before his death. Of the song, Perry said in an interview, “It was so cool and I love that. I’ve been writing it when I sign the book. I always put ‘Don’t give up’ because you shouldn’t give up.” Gabriel said in a 1989 interview that multiple people had approached him to say that “Don’t Give Up” “came at a very good time in their life” and recalled an instance where “a well-known American comedian” told him that the song saved his life.
The song was included in Gabriel’s concert film Live in Athens 1987 where he sang both parts and Secret World Live tour featuring singer Paula Cole. The DVD release of a performance in Italy in 1993 (released in 1994) included the duet. An all-orchestral recording featuring Ane Brun was released on Gabriel’s ninth studio album New Blood (2011). During Back to Front Tour from 2012 to 2014, Gabriel performed the Song live with singer Jennie Abrahamson. During i/o The Tour in 2023, Gabriel performed the song live with cellist/pianist/singer Ayanna Witter-Johnson.
The song was covered as a duet between American musician Willie Nelson and Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor in 1993. The single is included on Nelson’s Across the Borderline studio album, produced by Don Was, Paul Simon, and Roy Halee. O’Connor sings Kate Bush’s parts in the song. In an interview with Los Angeles Times, Nelson talked about the duet and how it was made. He said:
There was another lady, Dolly Parton, who was supposed to do that part, but she ended up being unavailable. At the rehearsal for the [Bob] Dylan tribute show in New York, Don [Was] suggested Sinead. I’d heard about the controversy with the Pope, but I’d never heard her sing. Don said, ‘She’s excellent. It turned out that she and Peter Gabriel were friends and she already knew the song. At the concert, she was booed for the controversy. I asked her, ‘Are you sure you still feel like coming in to sing tomorrow?’ She said, ‘Yes, I’ll be there.’ She came in the next day and sang her off.
A music video was made to accompany the song, featuring both singers. It has a sepia tone. It was reported that funds raised by sales of the single were in excess of $300,000.
Critical reception
Martin Monkman from AllMusic felt the duet is the “most stunning song” on the album, and “a brilliant piece of casting.” He added, “Nelson and O’Connor’s rendition is quietly triumphant and every bit as powerful as Gabriel and Bush’s original.” John Davis from Austin American-Statesman wrote, “The teaming of his crisp, autumnal baritone with the ethereal, spun-steel counterpoint of O’Connor’s voice on Gabriel’s paean of hope, “Don’t Give Up”, is little short of haunting. It is arguably the album’s most arresting interlude, as well as Nelson’s most accomplished pass ever at a modern pop song. And it nearly did not happen at all.” Bill DeYoung from Gainesville Sun described the duet as “heartfelt”. Paul Freeman from Los Angeles Times called it “a striking duet”. Pan-European magazine Music & Media remarked that Nelson’s version “makes a rodeo queen out of his duet partner”. Roger Morton from NME felt the pair’s version “is quite dignified enough to stand up on its own. It’s an understated rendering which, a few country twangs aside, leaves the interaction between Nelson’s grizzled tones and Sinead’s frail quavers to do the work.” An editor from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote that Nelson and O’Connor “make an odd but effective couple”. David Zimmerman from USA Today named it a “wonderful stop” on the album, noting its “hope-and-despair seesaw”.
Track listing
“Don’t Give Up”
“Don’t Give Up” (instrumental)
Alicia Keys and Bono version
“Don’t Give Up” was recorded by American recording artist Alicia Keys and Irish musician Bono. Retitled “Don’t Give Up (Africa)”, the song was produced by Keys and Steve Lillywhite. On 6 December 2005, the song was released as a single exclusively on iTunes and a ringtone version was released by Cingular Wireless. The proceeds of the release went to the charity Keep a Child Alive, for which Keys is a spokesperson. Keys commented that “I love this song. And I love Bono. I really respect what he has done for Africa and how he has used his fame to do good in the world. I hope I can do half as much in my life”. Keys and Bono performed the song live at Keys’ charity event the Black Ball, which raises money for the organization Keep A Child Alive. They performed the song also on The Oprah Winfrey Show in October 2006.
We were playing them the backing tracks and I don’t know if I started singing, or he did, but something started happening and we tracked it right here on the spot, that’s it, we’re done. There was a crowd in here, everybody came in from the other room because they could tell there was something going on in here.
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There are some interesting versions of this song. Willie Nelson paired with Sinead O’Connor? Sign me up. And it’s responsible (in some part) for Elton John’s sobriety? That’s incredible. To think… at some point, some destitute Oklahoma farmer had his picture taken, with no idea that the image would inspire art that improved lives.
The tangled paths of fate are beyond the minds of man to fathom.
Autobiographically, I first encountered this song in the late 1980s on the television show, “Kids Incorporated” (a title that feels ominously Orwellian in hindsight.) Anyway… there is an episode where a very young JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT belts out her own version. Did American culture peak at that moment? One can fairly speculate.
I thought that was it for me with that song. Then many years later, I found myself spending the summer in Germany and there I encountered the incredible music of Xavier Naidoo. As I listened to his album Zwischenspiel – Alles für den Herrn, on my portable CD player, I rediscovered the song. The song is performed in English, but it’s incredible nonetheless.
I wasn’t on the brink of giving up at that time, mind you, but it’s always good to be uplifted. Plus my friends and I enjoyed the drama. The album as a whole made for a great change of pace from the Michelle Branch playing in my CD player. (To be clear, it wasn’t actually *my* CD player. I didn’t possess the foresight to bring a CD player, so I was borrowing one from a friend in my international program who was smarter than I was..)
Many years passed again, and I finally ran into the original version of this song. A couple years ago, Kate Bush experienced a brief career resurgence because the Netflix show “Stranger Things” featured her 80’s hit “Running Up That Hill,” and this moment in time sent me into some exploration of her music. That led me back to her and Peter Gaabriel.
Is this song why I never give up? Perhaps. I hope it serves the same function for you, if you need it.
Beautiful ❤️ don’t give up because you can do great 👍🏼
Exactly! Thank you. 🙂
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Will do! Thanks for sharing the link.
😱