One of the best bridges that I have heard in all of modern music is in this song – Don’t Give Up. And it’s short and may not provide you with all the music goodies, but it sure did me when I was a youngen’. I think the album ‘So‘ is the first cassette tape I can ever remember procuring. The song Sledgehammer was a big hit and its video clip received great honours for its stop motion animation in the MTV Golden era. Now back to Don’t Give Up at 2:55 in the video below where Gabriel transforms the song in this bridge:
Got to walk out of here, I can’t take any more
Gonna stand on that bridge, keep my eyes down below
Whatever may come and whatever may go
That river’s flowing, that river’s flowing
There is only one other song with a bridge as captivating to my ears and that is Bruce Springsteen’s Countin’ on a Miracle at 1:47 in this video of his concert in Barcelona.
[Bridge]
Sleeping beauty awakes from her dream
With her lover’s kiss on her lips
Your kiss was taken from me
Now all I have is this
Your kiss, your kiss, your touch, your touch
Your heart, your heart, your strength, your strength
Your hope, your hope, your faith, your faith
Your face, your face, your love, your love
Your dream, your dream, your life, your life
Mind you, I’m just thinking off the top of my head and I imagine there are loads better ‘bridges’, but it’s just these two which come to mind now.
Don’t Give Up is a song written by English musician Peter Gabriel and recorded as a duet with Kate Bush for Gabriel’s fifth solo studio album So (1986). The single version was released as the second single from the album in the UK in 1986 and as the fifth single in the US in 1987. ‘So‘ is Gabriel’s best-selling album, having been certified fivefold platinum by the (RIAA).
The song was inspired by the Depression-era photographs of Dorothea Lange, showing poverty-stricken Americans in Dust Bowl conditions. Gabriel saw Lange’s images in a 1973 book titled In This Proud Land. He felt that a song based on this was wholly appropriate to difficult economic conditions in England under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher. But let’s put this thing into perspective here and I relay this extract from my article January 4 this year:
In 1980 where 4 people in 10 lived on less than 2 dollars a day (adjusted for inflation), now it is 1 in 10. This is the greatest alleviation of poverty in human history.
In a survey of college educated adults in the UK about extreme poverty only 12 percent of participants thought extreme poverty had been alleviated in this time period.
Gabriel originally wrote the song from a reference point of American roots music and he approached country singer Dolly Parton to sing it with him. However, Parton turned it down, so his friend Kate Bush took her place. Dolly Parton seems a popular go – to choice and British sing-songwriter David Gray in my article Kathleen also chose her and wrote a letter with a demo of his song. Parton turned down the offer as she was busy.
Reference:
1. Don’t Give Up (Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush song) – Wikipedia
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
Observation Blogger 
This is such a great song, with a quiet intensity that’s really impactful. Peter and Kate’s vocals mesh together so beautifully.
I’m not as big a fan as I was before. The bridge always stands up for me and Bush’s precursor into the bridge is exemplary. Obviously, the lyrics throughout are very soul searching which I admire.Thanks Jeff as always for your thoughts on it.