Not quite. It peaked at #44 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Sigh…this statement is about as inane and wrong as the image of Mexicans seen in the video…
I was a huge Genesis fan in my youth, and had a similar reaction to “Who Dunnit” from Abacab and “Illegal Alien” from Genesis; WTF!
I like a lot of Genesis songs, but “Illegal Alien” emphatically isn’t one of them. Omitting it from my iPod was a no-brainer. I don’t blame anyone who thinks it’s racist.
It was Genesis trying to be funny. Sort of like Harold The Barrel from Nursery Cryme. It wasn’t meant to be racist. But in these days of massive P.C. people will get offended by anything.
The playing on the song is actually very tight and it has some complex sections. That being said, it’s my least favorite song on the album and one of the few Genesis songs that I’m not crazy about. (Although I like it more than Misunderstanding.)