Peter Gabriel Releases New Song ‘A Hard Lesson’: Listen

May 31 marks the second full moon of the month, known as the blue moon, and with it comes another new single from Peter Gabriel’s slowly gestating project, o\i, “A Hard Lesson.”

Like his previous LP, 2023’s i/o, he’s slowly unfurling his upcoming album with songs from o/i releasing with every full moon through the course of 2026. It culminates with the album’s release. 

“A Hard Lesson” is the oldest song from his upcoming project, the musician revealed on his website. It was written in the late Eighties or early Nineties while Gabriel was in Senegal.

“I was falling in love with the music I heard there. I loved the tension created by the use of polyrhythms, particularly the threes and fours, so that was the start of this song,” he wrote.

“It’s a quirky, strange and long track but it’s a journey. It’s about trying to find a place, your place, how you fit in. I’ve enjoyed playing with old R&B and folk references as well.”

He explained the reason why the song took some decades to come to fruition. “Sometimes things take time — most people do stuff a lot faster – but I have no problem with understanding my own process,” he wrote. “Some things will mature and evolve spontaneously and some will just stay hidden-away in a box until their moment in the light appears.”

As with his previously released o\i songs, the track will receive two mixes. The one he released Sunday is a bright-side mix by Mark “Spike” Stent. The dark-side mix from Tchald Blake will arrive “on the next moon,” per his website.