Don't Give Up - Remastered

Jill Gabriel, who was Peter's wife at the time, told Songfacts: "I saw an article in a newspaper about a woman who jumped out of a huge block of flats with her child and killed herself. I gave it to Peter and it was the original inspiration and he was heartbroken to read it. However his lyrics are always multilayered with many different influences." Peter has also cited a TV show about unemployment and family life, and a photo by Dorothea Lange of a family in the Dust Bowl Depression as influences on the song.

Peter Gabriel had some kind of nervous breakdown in 1985, and he wrote this song to reward the support he got from his family. This album provides a glimpse of Gabriel's state of mind: it's a mixture of excessive enthusiast songs ("Big Time," "Sledgehammer") and depressive ones ("Don't Give Up," "Mercy Street").

Gabriel said of this song's message: "The basic idea is that handling failure is one of the hardest things we have to learn to do."