Peter Gabriel Covers Tom Waits for Africa

BY Alex HudsonPublished Jun 22, 2010

Peter Gabriel loves recording cover songs. We already learned this earlier this year when he released Scratch My Back, a covers album in which he performed his own versions of tracks by Radiohead, Neil Young, David Bowie and more. Now, Gabriel has unveiled another new redo: a take on Tom Waits's 1983 tune "In the Neighbourhood."

Gabriel recorded a solo piano version of the song for the Voice Project, which aims to use music to raise awareness for the war-ravaged region of central Africa that includes northern Uganda, southern Sudan and eastern Congo. The idea for an awareness initiative began with women in Uganda singing songs of forgiveness to soldiers in hiding, and the Voice Project was co-founded by Gabriel's daughter Anna.

You can see a video of Gabriel's performance of "In the Neighbourhood" below, which also features his commentary on the track. Head over the Voice Project website to see previous episodes in the song series. Past instalments include R.E.M.'s Mike Mills covering Billy Bragg, Andrew Bird covering Cass McCombs and Bedouin Soundclash covering K'naan.

Peter Gabriel » Tom Waits from The Voice Project on Vimeo.

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