Gabriel's first three solo albums–each entitled Peter Gabriel, although the remastered versions are helpfully numbered 1, 2, and 3–were experiments in reinvention.  

 Gabriel's first three solo albums–each entitled Peter Gabriel, although the remastered versions are helpfully numbered 1, 2, and 3–were experiments in reinvention.  

 Gabriel's first three solo albums–each entitled Peter Gabriel, although the remastered versions are helpfully numbered 1, 2, and 3–were experiments in reinvention.  

 Security expands on the possibilities by adding world-music elements to the mix. Gabriel had already made moves toward African music in "Biko," which opened with a brief mbube chorale, but that bit of color is nowhere near as dramatic. 

 Gabriel's internationalist musical strategy didn't translate particularly well to live performance, at least not by the evidence of Plays Live. 

 Several selections on the all-instrumental Music From the Film "Birdy" are reworkings of tunes from Security and the third Peter Gabriel, transforming familiar melodies. 

 With So, Gabriel finally figures out how to play these new tools as pop. Amazingly, he does so without compromising the ambition or adventurousness of his previous efforts. 

 Gabriel's second soundtrack album, Passion (composed for Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ), is similarly world-music savvy, though it draws more from the Middle East than Africa. 

 Shaking the Tree, by contrast, makes no such moves in that direction, offering only a representation of his big hits augmented by a fresh collaboration with Youssou N'Dour (the title tune) and a new version of "Here Comes the Flood."  

 Us, which followed, did its best to pick up where So left off, mixing sophisticated funk-pop ("Steam," "Kiss That Frog") with issue-oriented art rock. In this case, however, the issues were more personal. 

 None of that was audible in Secret World Live, however, which made the pop content seem more like the white funk it wanted to be, while rendering the artier fare all the more indigestible.  

 That, sadly, seems to have been the high-water mark for Gabriel. Eight years passed before he finally released a new album, and that turned out to be another Birdy-like soundtrack. 

 The misleadingly titled Hit offers only one new song ("Burn You Up, Burn You Down") while recapping much of Up and rounding the disc out with middling rarities plus a sprinkling of actual hits.