Music / Nursery Cryme

"Play me my song. Here it comes again."

"Play me Old King Cole
That I may join with you,
All your hearts now seem so far from me.
It hardly seems to matter now."

—"The Musical Box"

Nursery Cryme is the third studio album by Genesis, released through Charisma Records on November 1971. It was the first album to include guitarist Steve Hackett and drummer Phil Collins, who filled in for Anthony Phillips and John Mayhew respectively after an extensive tour of the previous album Trespass. The inclusion of Collins and Hackett also solidified the band's identity as a Progressive Rock band for the remainder of the seventies.

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Tracklist:

Side One

1. "The Musical Box" (10:25)
2. "For Absent Friends" (1:48)
3. "The Return of the Giant Hogweed" (8:09)

Side Two

1. "Seven Stones" (5:08)
2. "Harold the Barrel" (3:01)
3. "Harlequin" (2:56)
4. "The Fountain of Salmacis" (8:02)

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Principal Members:

• Tony Banks – keyboards, guitars, backing vocals
• Phil Collins – drums, percussion, vocals
• Peter Gabriel – lead vocals, flute, percussion
• Steve Hackett – guitars
• Mike Rutherford – guitars, bass guitars

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Why don't you trope me, trope me, trope me, trope me now, now, now, now, now:

• All There in the Manual: While there is no album drop in the lyrics, the liner notes inside the album contextualizes "The Musical Box" as it relates to the album cover.
• Black Comedy: "Harold the Barrel" is a jaunty piece about a crowd of people unsuccessfully trying to talk the title character out of committing suicide. The comedy, however, goes swiftly out the window once Harold jumps, at which point the music becomes much more melancholy as it slowly fades out.
  Father of three: It's disgusting
  Such a horrible thing to do
  Harold the Barrel cut off his toes and he served them all for tea
  He can't go far. He can't go far.
  (Hasn't got a leg to stand on!)
  He can't go far.
• Botanical Abomination: The titular plant in "Return of the Giant Hogweed" is played up as a malevolent force attempting to wipe out the human race as an exaggeration of its status as a noxious weed. The properties as described in the song — its history and invasive nature, its distinctive odor, and its toxic sap — are accurate, but are portrayed in a more malevolent manner.
• Companion Cube: "The Musical Box" involved nine-year old Cyntha Jane de Balise-William interacting with the eponymous box which contained the soul of Henry Hamilton-Smythe, the eight-year old boy she decapitated in a croquet match.
• Dirty Old Man: In "The Musical Box", after being freed from the titular trinket by Cynthia, Henry suddenly ages into an old man and becomes overwhelmed with lust, attempting to seduce the nine-year-old girl. Luckily for Cynthia, Henry's efforts are thwarted when the nanny comes in and kills him by instinctively throwing the musical box at him. In live performances of the song, Peter Gabriel would don a grotesque rubber mask◊ to play the part of the aged Henry, depicting him as dirty both inside and out.
• Driven to Suicide: The Title Character of "Harold the Barrel" is looking to jump off a tall ledge, with a man on the street implying that his suicidal state is the result of financial ruination.
• Epic Rocking: "The Musical Box", "The Return of the Giant Hogweed" and "The Fountain of Salmacis".
• Franchise Codifier: The eclectically pastoral Progressive Rock sound on this album would quickly come to define Genesis' subsequent albums all the way until guitarist Steve Hackett's departure in 1977.
• Heavy Mithril: "The Fountain of Salmacis" retells the myth of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis, in which the latter rapes the former and merges with him into the first hermaphrodite. Afterwards, the titular fountain is cursed by the merged Hermaphroditus so that anyone else who drinks from it takes on his form.
• Hermaphrodite: Per the myth its based on, in "The Fountain of Salmacis", the Title Character and Hermaphroditus are merged together into a being with both male and female genitalia.
• Horrible History Metal: A comedic example with "The Return of the Giant Hogweed". The song examines how the plant was taken from Russia by British nobles, only to become an invasive weed throughout western Europe and North America, portraying it as a war between humanity and a Botanical Abomination. Fitting the "metal" part of the trope's name, the song is one of the album's harder rockers.
• In the Style of: "The Fountain of Salmacis" was inspired by King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King, particularly the heavy, atmospheric use of Mellotron strings.
• Ironic Nursery Tune: "Old King Cole" in "The Musical Box". Gabriel quoted said rhyme at one point, but it's done so in a sinister fashion, given that it's a ghost story about a dead child whose music box summons his ghost... who then rapidly begins ageing and experiencing "a lifetime's desires", as the liner notes put it.
• Longest Song Goes First: The album kicks off with the 10:25 "The Musical Box".
• Lyrical Dissonance: "Harold the Barrel", an upbeat song about a man threatening suicide.
• Miniscule Rocking: "For Absent Friends", the only song on the album clocking in at less than two minutes.
• New Sound Album: While the shift to Progressive Rock was already instigated on Trespass, here it gets finalized, discarding most of the folk elements in favor of a layered, eclectic style that places emphasis on textural electric guitar. The only major holdovers of the previous album's sound are the first half of "The Musical Box" and "Harlequin", both of which were co-written by Steve Hackett's predecessor, Anthony Phillips.
• Non-Appearing Title: Most of the songs' titles are absent from the lyrics, the exceptions being "Seven Stones", "Harold the Barrel", and "Harlequin".
• Rapid Aging: In "The Musical Box", Henry ages from a small child to an old man in a matter of moments after Cynthia frees him from the musical box. As a result, he suddenly experiences a lifetime of sexual urges and makes advances to Cynthia before he meets a quick end.
• Pun-Based Title: As fitting of Gabriel-era Genesis, the album title is itself a pun, playing off of "nursery rhyme" in reference to the use of "Old King Cole" in "The Musical Box".
• Re-Cut:
  • 8-track releases reshuffle the tracklist to fit a four-program format. How these changes are applied depends on the region:
    • In the UK, the altered running order is "For Absent Friends", "The Return of the Giant Hogweed", "The Musical Box", "Seven Stones", Harold the Barrel", "Harlequin", and "The Fountain of Salmacis". Additionally, "The Musical Box" and "Harlequin" are split into two parts due to them overlapping with the changeovers between programs.
    • In the US, the running order goes "For Absent Friends", "The Return of the Giant Hogweed", "Seven Stones", "Harlequin", "The Musical Box", "Harold the Barrel", and "The Fountain of Salmacis". Additionally, "The Musical Box" and "Harold the Barrel" are split into two parts due to them overlapping with the changeovers between programs.
    • In Canada, the running order goes "The Fountain of Salmacis", "The Musical Box", "For Absent Friends", "Seven Stones", "The Return of the Giant Hogweed", "Harold the Barrel", and "Harlequin". Additionally, "The Musical Box" and "The Return of the Giant Hogweed" are split into two parts due to them overlapping with the changeovers between programs.
  • UK cassette releases swap "The Return of the Giant Hogweed" and "The Fountain of Salmacis" to even out the lengths of the two sides.
• Severed Head Sports: As portrayed on the album cover, the girl playing croquet with a severed head.
• Shout-Out: "The Musical Box" namedrops and quotes the British nursery rhyme "Old King Cole".
• Skewed Priorities: "Harold the Barrel", with Harold's mother trying to talk him out of committing suicide. This is ultimately what sets Harold off the edge, both figuratively and literally.
  Mrs. Barrel: Come off the ledge — if your father were alive he'd be very, very, very upset
  You just can't jump, you just can't jump.
  Your shirt's all dirty, there's a man here from the BBC.
  You just can't jump.
• Soul Jar: In "The Musical Box", Henry's soul becomes tied to the titular device after Cynthia kills him. Not only is he imprisoned in it before Cynthia frees him by playing it, but when the nanny thwarts his aged self's attempts to seduce Cynthia by throwing the musical box at him, both he and the trinket are destroyed in an instant.
• Step Up to the Microphone: The first album in which Phil Collins not only appeared in Genesis, but also the first in which he was the sole lead vocal of a song ("For Absent Friends"). He also was co-lead alongside Peter Gabriel for "Harold the Barrel" and "Harlequin".
• Talking Down the Suicidal: "Harold the Barrel" revolves around a crowd of people attempting to convince the title character not to jump off a ledge to his death. They ultimately fail, with Harold simply shouting "You must be joking!" and hurling himself onto the pavement.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: The liner notes detail that a nine-year old child decapitated an eight-year old child with a croquet mallet (as portrayed in the album cover).
• Ur-Example: Retrospective analysts cite Hackett's guitar solos on "The Musical Box" as the first instances of the "galloping" guitar riffs (marked by their similarities to the rhythm of a running horse) that would become commonplace among Heavy Metal artists (most notably Iron Maiden).

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