Most artists start sounding uninspired by their fifties. Look at how nobody cites We Can't Dance as his/her favorite Genesis album.

Tell that to Bruce. ;)

i won't cite it as my fave

but i do quite like it

I've just been reading American Psycho and of course some of my favorite bits are his chapters dedicated to music reviews. His review of 80s Genesis is spot on. I love how Patrick Bateman couldn't understand pre-Duke Genesis because it was too "artsy" and he couldn't understand it. A serial killer would feel that way haha.

What you quoted was about the change from what he did with Genesis to his first solo album. Not about his whole career.

I voted for Nursery Cryme and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Nursery Cryme is my favourite because it contains The Musical Box, which is up there with Better By You, Better Than Me and 21st Century Schizoid Man.

Nursery Cryme, Selling England by the Pound, and Foxtrot take it for me. SEBTP is the most consistent in my opinion, but I love "The Musical Box" and the hogweed song way too much to not vote Nursery Cryme as well. And of course, if Foxtrot only consisted of "Supper's Ready", and the rest of the album was Peter Gabriel miming, I'd still have it in my collection.

It really took a long time for that song to click with me. When it finally did, though, I listened to it on repeat about 5 times. Even though it was fairly early in their career, it is still the epitome of what classic Genesis was.

Foxtrot!

As much as I like almost everything Genesis did between 1970 and 1977, I must insist that Trespass and Nursery Cryme hit on some kind of magic in a way that I hear from no other in the history of m"modern" music. You can take any ten second segment of pieces like Stagnation, The Knife, or The Fountain of Salmacis and those fleeting moments do more for me than the entire career catalogues of groups like The Beatles before them or Rush after.

I do also think that Trick of the Tail deserves an honorable mention. Dance in a Volcano + Los Endos are some of the more unique and out-of-this-world sounding parts, and probably a peak in their music/sound. But the rest of the record just does not hold up.

(take into account, I talk strictly music/sound here. I come from a bias that has little concern for songwriting or lyric/concept)