This album track from Melt shocked listeners for a number of reasons. Initially it caused a rupture in music production at the start of the 1980s. To all intents and purposes, it was the first track to foreground the use of gated reverb on the drums. This effect, which gives an intense muscularity to the punchiness of a rhythm while presenting each hit in a pristine separation that borders on sterility, would become the trademark sound of pop in the first half of the 1980s. Gabriel’s version of the story (which has been contested) is that engineer Hugh Padghamcame up with the effect as a colouring agent and applied it to Phil Collins’s kit during the sessions for Melt. Gabriel became excited by the idea of pushing the now alien-sounding rhythm to the front of the mix and asked his former bandmate to play a simple pattern without frills; going as far as taking all the metal off the kit. When Collins kept on going to hit drums that were no longer there, they solved the problem by simply adding more toms. The results were brutally impressive. (Collins – along with Padgham and producer Steve Lillywhite– wasted little time in applying the methodology to his own single In the Air Tonight. But popular music is at its most impressive when the message is as impactful as the medium. On Intruder, the scrape of a guitar string sounds like a metallic garrotte being tautened to breaking point as Gabriel sings creepily from the point of view of what appears to be a transvestite housebreaker – and the motivation of sexual assault is hinted at darkly. Whatever is going on, Gabriel’s desired aim of creating “a sense of urgency” is certainly achieved.

5. Biko

One of the criticisms often levelled at political songs written by pop stars in the 1980s was that these tracks tended to be ill-focused polemics or even offensive flights of fancy; that they were little more than passing whims of the ill-informed and loosely engaged. Biko, the closing track from Melt, could not have been more specific. The opening lyrics served to root the subject matter – the murder of the black South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko – in as specific a geographical, temporal, spatial and political position as possible: “September ’77 / Port Elizabeth, weather fine / It was business as usual / In police room 619.” From 1980 onwards – the year he co-founded Womad – Gabriel would receive flak from some quarters because of his involvement in so-called “world music”. However, Gabriel’s own interest in African music and politics was neither faddish nor shallow. Biko – bookended with recordings of Ngomhla Sibuyayo and Senzeni Na?, as performed at the murdered man’s funeral, and containing the Xhosa chorus of Yehla Moya – remains a dignified memorial to a brave man.

6. The Rhythm of the Heat

7. Red Rain

Early in his career, Gabriel had an idea for a movie called Mozo. One of the elements of the plot concerned a village that was punished by a bloody Old Testament-style deluge, and Red Rain was going to be the music for the opening titles. Movie or no movie, Red Rain still makes for a stirring opening track to his fifth studio album, So. When it was released as a single it was, for no clear reason, a big hit only in America, reaching No 3 on the mainstream rock singles chart. Perhaps the apocalyptic imagery was too heavy for the singles-buying public everywhere else. Either way, the week it hit big among rock fans in the States, thrash metal band Slayer went into the studio to record their career (and extreme metal) defining third album, Reign In Blood with its centrepiece anthem, Raining Blood. Who knows – maybe there was something in the air.

8. Don’t Give Up (with Kate Bush) 

Gabriel’s biggest hit, Sledgehammer, was a bug-eyed and brashly synthetic reworking of the Stax soul sound and was adopted en masse by the MTV generation, partially because of its eye-catching video. But Gabriel was going through something of a purple patch, and wasn’t short of options when it came to potential singles. Don’t Give Up was another example of him reworking a black American sound in a modern but offbeat manner. This time the style he picked was dustbowl gospel, chosen because lyrically the song was about the mass unemployment of the 1980s in the UK. Gabriel originally wrote the song with Dolly Parton in mind, but she turned down the duet. Kate Bush, who had already appeared as a vocalist on Melt, stepped in and one of the great pop duets of the mid-80s was born.

9. Steam

The second single from the 1992 album Us was Gabriel’s last big hit in the UK and the US. It fits roughly in the same mould as Sledgehammer – a brash and funky take on Stax soul – although perhaps “roughly” is the wrong word entirely in this context. By this stage, due in no small part to rock bands such as Primal Scream, the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays incorporating hip-hop and funk-inspired breaks into their sound, this kind of ultra-slick Prince and INXS-leaning pop was starting to sound anachronistic. Judged on its own merits, though, Steam is copper-bottomed radio magic.

10. Darkness

Gabriel’s last studio album proper, Up (released in 2002), was inspired by his fears regarding world politics and his ruminations on his own mortality. The track Sky Blue alone apparently took him a decade to finish writing. However there were still plenty of moments of studio inspiration to surprise the listener such as the opening track, Darkness. Its high-contrast, dynamic combination of reflective piano ballad with Nine Inch Nails/Outside-era Bowie strength industrial metal bombast reflects the turbulent process of someone confronting their most primal fears.

John Doran

The Guardian