Peter Gabriel has released “Looking For The Happy,” the ninth song to be taken from his forthcoming album o\i. The track is released today on the sturgeon full moon and is written and produced by Gabriel.
The first version to arrive is the Bright-Side Mix by Mark “Spike” Stent, with the Dark-Side Mix set to follow on the next new moon.
Speaking about the song, Gabriel said: “I’ve always found it so much easier to write sad songs than happy ones, and I thought, right, I’m going to challenge myself here. I wanted to base it on a groove that made dancing irresistible; it felt like it was unleashing some joy. Although this is about the search for happiness, it had to have a chorus feeling like a celebration.”
Gabriel says the song explores gratitude, nature and the search for happiness in the present moment.
He added: “If you can find what in today, in the now, is making you happy and what you’re grateful for, I think it’s a much better ride — a better vehicle to travel in — and as I get older, I’m trying to do a little less bitching.”
The song began with a groove that originally had a Latin flavour, something Gabriel says helped shape the track.
“The groove is always so important to me,” he said. “If I don’t feel it in my body, then everything is a whole lot harder. There are obviously songs I write which are not groove-based, but this is one where it clearly helped shape the song.”
The cover art for “Looking For The Happy” is Closed Circuit II by Tishan Hsu.
Gabriel said he had only recently discovered Hsu’s work and was struck by its mix of simplicity, technology and feeling.
“In the way that the song was trying to explore consciousness, technology and nature, I think Tishan does that in some of his own work,” he said. “Although the work is about tech, it’s interesting that the work itself is not really technology-based — it is very traditional painting and sculptural techniques that he’s employing.”
Gabriel added that the artwork and song appeared to share similar themes around technology, nature and humanity.
“Often when we see these images for the songs, we’re reacting spontaneously to something that feels right, and then we dig down and discover that there are similar themes being explored visually and musically,” he said. “It’s great when you find that something that intuitively felt right also has all these other connections that help to make the music and the art feel part of the same whole.”
Further details on the release plans for the full album will follow.
