Land of Confusion
"Land of Confusion" is a song by the English rock band Genesis from their 1986 album Invisible Touch. The song was the third track on the album and was the third track released as a single, reaching No. 4 in the U.S. and No. 14 in the UK in late 1986. It made No. 8 in the Netherlands. The music was written by the band, while the lyrics were written by guitarist Mike Rutherford. The song's video featured puppets from the 1980s UK sketch show Spitting Image.
Music video
The song is widely remembered for its music video, which had heavy airplay on MTV. The video features caricature puppets by the British television show Spitting Image. After Phil Collins saw a caricatured version of himself on the show, he commissioned the show's creators, Peter Fluck and Roger Law, to create puppets of the entire band, as well as all the characters in the video.
The video opens with a caricatured Ronald Reagan (voiced by Chris Barrie), Nancy Reagan, and a chimpanzee (parodying Reagan's film Bedtime for Bonzo), going to bed at 16:30 (4:30 PM). Nancy is absorbed in reading ‘His Way’, Kitty Kelley's unauthorized biography of Frank Sinatra, in which claims are made of sexual relations between Sinatra and the then actress Nancy Davis prior to her marriage to Reagan. Reagan, holding a teddy bear, goes to sleep and begins to have a nightmare, which sets the premise for the entire video. The video intermittently features a line of stomping feet, illustrating an army marching through a swamp, and they pick up heads of Cold War-era political figures in the swamp along the way (an allusion to Motel Hell).
Podcasts:
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by In Flames
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by Genesis
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by Disturbed
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by Ray Wilson
Land Of Confusion
by: In FlamesI must've dreamed a thousand dreams
Been haunted by a million screams
But I can hear the marching feet
They're moving in-to the street.
Now did you read the news today
They say the danger's gone away
But I can see the fire's still alight
There burning into the night.
There's too many men
Too many people
Making too many problems
And not much love to go round
Can't you see
This is a land of confusion.
This is the world we live in
And these are the hands we're given
Use them and let's start trying
To make it a place worth living in.
Ooh Superman where are you now
When everything's gone wrong somehow
The men of steel, the men of power
Are losing control by the hour.
This is the time
This is the place
So we look for the future
But there's not much love to go round
Tell me why, this is a land of confusion.
This is the world we live in
And these are the hands we're given
Use them and let's start trying
To make it a place worth living in.
I won't be coming home tonight
My generation will put it right
We're not just making promises
That we know, we'll never keep.
Too many men
There's too many people
Making too many problems
And not much love to go round
Can't you see
This is a land of confusion.
Now this is the world we live in
And these are the hands we're given
Use them and let's start trying
To make it a place worth fighting for.
This is the world we live in
And these are the names we're given
Stand up and let's start showing
Just where our lives are going to.