Peter Gabriel Previews Upcoming Album 'o/i' With New Song One By One
Thursday, 30 July 2026
Written by Jon Stickler
Photo: Nadav Kander
Peter Gabriel is continuing the rollout of his upcoming album with the release of a new song.
Written and produced by Gabriel, the sprawling, emotional One By One (Bright Side Mix) runs for almost 10 minutes and sees the British art-rock legend return to Mozo, a mythical character that has appeared throughout his work since his time with Genesis in the '70s. He said:
"This is another song that comes out of the brain show that I am working on and the character has been effectively torn apart and is trying to reassemble himself one piece at a time. I needed a character for the story and I'd always wanted to do a little more with Mozo, who I had introduced many years back, and I thought, well, let's give him another blast here. He's been brought back from the dead.
"What was interesting for me about Mozo was that he was not fully of the world and not fully outside it. For the original second album narrative, he was found on this waste tip, and there was a reference to alchemy, and how you only really get the opportunity to create gold out of the lowest material; shit. In Japanese culture, they also have kintsugi (kin: gold, tsugi: repair), where a broken cup is repaired with gold or precious metals and the repaired cup with its faults showing ends up more valuable than the original. It's a beautiful symbol for humanity, because we're remarkably easy to break and trying to reassemble self, psyche, and sanity, is really the journey of the song.
"There are two or three story songs on the record, and I actually like the length of time they occupy, and I like the fact that you have to stay in it for the ride to understand the story. It's like when you arrive in some hut in the woods and it takes a while just to settle in and get yourself tuned-in to the pace of that place. I wanted a bit of that in the song. If people are on for the full ride, they're going to take it through to the end. It's a long journey, but I think its place in the show, which is percolating in my head, it'll be towards the end, if not the end."
One By One serves as the latest preview of Gabriel's forthcoming album, 'o/i', following earlier singles I Belong to the Sky, A Hard Lesson, Won't Stand Down, Till Your Mind Is Shining, What Lies Ahead, Put the Bucket Down and Been Undone.
Gabriel is sharing music from the new record in the same way he rolled out tracks for his previous album, 2023's 'i/o', in sync with the lunar cycle, with One By One dropping alongside July's full moon. Each song is accompanied by two mixes, a Bright-Side Mix by Mark "Spike" Stent and a Dark-Side Mix by Tchad Blake, with the Dark-Side Mix of One By One to be released alongside the next new moon. The full album is expected at the end of the year.
Each track also arrives with unique cover art, with One By One accompanied by Pieces from Canadian artist David Altmejd. Gabriel explained:
"One of the things I loved about what David does is that he seems to get these images and ideas and then cuts them up and reassembles them. Almost like moments of time, or maybe like an old-fashioned flick book where you get just an incremental movement from one image to the other. It looked like David had a similar direction in that he's taking the same thing and cutting it up and reassembling it. That worked perfectly for this song, and I was excited that David was happy to be part of this project."
Altmejd added: "One By One evokes a kind of spiritual evolution by piecing together the broken parts of oneself. This resonates deeply with me because I understand my sculptures as being made the same way. They start by forming themselves in matter, then they are destroyed, and finally reassembled in a way that makes them transcend materiality."
Last month, Gabriel featured on Beyond The Brilliant Haze by Everything Is Recorded, the collaborative artist project led by Richard Russell, alongside Maryland rapper .idk.
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