I’ve always been curious about the song Ilegal alien by Genesis.
Was it supposed to be racist or was it just misunderstood? I mean, I don’t personally care if they were trying to be offensive. But I find it very odd that British musicians would write/perform such a song.
Had an American artist done it I guess it’s meaning would be a tad less mysterious at least to me.
So what is your take on it? To me it borders on something Weird Al would have put out.
The lyrics don’t seem racist to me at all, actually. It’s been decades since I heard it, but it seems like a typical commentary about a place where lots of people come in to work. England’s always had it’s share of immigrants, illegal and otherwise. Hell, I tried to be one of them, long long ago. My sweetie wanted to go to college there, so I figured I could just get over there and get work under the table while he went to school. Wasn’t as easy as it sounded, and didn’t do it, but still…it’s not a real unusual thing, I wouldn’t imagine.
I hear that it’s no fun.
I’ve always thought it was an odd thing for a Brit to be singing about. I mean, not about illegal immigration itself, but that he’s singing it from the point of view of a Mexican in America. I guess it’s probably for commercial reasons.Most Americans aren’t really aware of the immigration situation in UK and might not relate to a song about the plight of a Pakistani (?) Great song, by the way. Hearing an Englishman doing a Mexican accent “…I’ve got a seesteh” is hilarious.
I don’t consider it racist. Seems to me it’s a staement on how immigrants are treated in the U.S. (and maybe Britain, I don’t know, but it does seem to be from a Mexican POV) as well as taking a poke at some widely-held stereotypes.
Not the most insightful or subtle commentary, perhaps, but it* is *about something other than making fun of the wetbacks.
There’s clearly no racist intent in the song, as it’s meant to be a positive and sympathetic message. The presentation is just tin-eared and tasteless. The really offensive aspect is that a once-great band like Genesis should be reduced not only to recording a moronic ditty like this one, but to tainting their public image with it by issuing the wretched thing as a single and video.
Heh - the first time I heard the term “illegal aliens” I looked wide-eyed at my Dad and said “Dad…there are *aliens *in California?!”
Yep. And there are immigrants, too.
What Biffy said. Except that I’d never been a fan of Peter Gabriel Genesis. They were much better at pop rock than prog rock.
–Cliffy
I agree. What the fuck were they thinking? Who wants to hear Phil Collins singing in a faux-Mexican accent? Who thought that was a good idea? Ugh. I personally thought he was going for some sort of Jamaican thing with that weird singing affectation, but the video shows otherwise. What a terrible waste of a song.
I thought all of these things when I heard the song for the first time last year. I thought it was catchy, albeit a touch racist.
Then I saw the music video with them all sporting mustaches, and I thought it was a little more than a touch racist!
“That was the scene in California’s Mojave Desert five years ago - our historic first view of the Newcomers’ ship.”
I assume it’s simultaneously a ham-fisted attempt at comedy with a tiny dash of social relevance, set in Mexico because it’s far away and thus inoffensive. And it sounds awful, and Phil Collins sounds as if he’s trying to channel Sting, which shows you how bad he was at accents. Even Phil Collins would never have dared dress up as a Pakistani or Jamaican immigrant to the UK in the early 1980s, and in any case it wouldn’t have worked; the gist of the song is that it’s hard for a Mexican to get into the US - he even has to prostitute his sister - whereas the National Front’s argument was that it was far too easy for people to enter the UK. It has shades of The Beatles’ “No Pakistanis” version of “Get Back” - even in the late 60s, when Alf Garnett was hugely popular, The Beatles realised it would have been far too near-the-knuckle and open to misinterpretation. You can imagine the football chants.
There’s a complicating factor, too. In the UK in the early 1980s the stereotype of a Spanish person was of a short man with a moustache called Manuel, and Mexicans were basically Spanish people from far away with sombreros. The reality of Mexico is of course is brutal mass beheadings and desperate poverty, but in the UK in the early 1980s Mexico was like something from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Full of supporting characters. Distant and alien. There was never mass tourism between the UK and Mexico; why bother, when New York and Florida are closer? What does Mexico have that New York does not? For that matter, what does the rest of the US have that New York does not? Or indeed the rest of the world? Some nice scenery, not much else.
The crucial thing is that Spanish people and by extension Mexicans were perceived to be short and unthreatening and thus open to mockery, and also sufficiently white that they could be mocked without the mocker coming across as racist. 'cause Spanish people aren’t a race, are they? They’re people.
Thank you. While many here have made great comments, this is the one point I truly want to stress. Why on Earth was a British band doing this? 
There is no apparent segue from Mexican/U.S. illegal immigration to that happening in England or anywhere else in Europe.
And, just to be clear, I’m not personally offended by the song. I’d like to see U.S. troops on our boarders. I’m just curious as to why a band from the UK did this, and what their point was in doing it.
Gotta admit it was a weird one. But it did sell well.
That’s got to be the first time in 25 years that I’ve heard that song and I recall thinking it was strange then. And the video! Honestly, the only thing that saves it is the completely goofy way they’re sending themselves up in it. Collins in that wig. Is he trying to be Mexican? Is he making fun of how bald he is? Who the hell knows?
It was strange then (I was in college at the time) and IMHO it’s still strange.
Not to beat a dead horse to death, but I find the main reason it’s so strange is the origin of it’s authors/performers. Had some American group done this we’d be having quite a different conversation over it. Does anyone else agree with this statement?
I have to agree. It’s a complete left field thing coming from them.
It never seemed that out of character to me, because this was at the time that Genesis’s material was sounding more and more like Phil Collins’s solo career. Which was all faux Motown and transatlantic pop/AOR, heavily American influenced. They had moved away from the painfully English stuff by that stage.
Well this lyric is a bit questionable…
Was Illegal Alien a Top 40 Hit? I remember That’s All being HUGE and Home By the Sea on the classic rock station (back in the day when classic rock stations actually added songs to their playlists), but not Illegal Alien.