Listen to the new Peter Gabriel single Playing For Time

07 March 2023

Peter Gabriel has released the third new single from his upcoming new studio album, i/o, again to coincide with the new moon, as has done with previous singles Panopticom and The Court.

You can listen to the new Dark Side Mix of the plaintive, slow-building and lushly orchestrated ballad Playing For Time below.

"Playing For Time is a song that I have been working on for a long time and have performed live, without lyrics, so some people may be familiar with it," Gabriel explains. "It’s been an important song for me. It's about time, mortality and memories and the idea that each of us has a planet full of memories which get stashed inside the brain.

"It is more of a personal song about how you assemble memories and whether we are prisoners of time or whether that is something that can actually free us. I do think it’s good to push yourself towards more bold or interesting experiences because then you will have richer memories to feed you when you get to my age. You also get taught by every meaningful experience that you go through."

Recorded at Real World Studios in Wiltshire and The Beehive in London, Playing For Time features Tom Cawley, who played piano on Gabriel's New Blood Tour, and an orchestral arrangement, by Ed Shearmur (who had handled the orchestration on Randy Newman's That'll Do, on which Gabriel sang), was recorded at British Grove Studios in London with a number of players who previously featured in the New Blood Orchestra.