Songfacts®:

• Barry Williams is an actor who played Greg Brady on the popular '70s TV show The Brady Bunch. This song deals with "trash TV" - mostly talk shows such as Jerry Springer, Ricki Lake, etc.
• This song was not originally meant to reference the Brady Bunch actor Barry Williams. Gabriel reportedly wanted a plain ordinary sounding name for the title. He stated in several interviews that he never watched The Brady Bunch or knew there was an American actor with that name. Yet, Barry Williams (the actor) does appear briefly in the song's video at the beginning as a member of the talk show audience. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Matt - Lebanon, PA
• Sean Penn directed the music video for this song. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Justin - Felts Mills, NY
• In 2021, Rolling Stone contributor Andy Greene wrote a negative piece on "The Barry Williams Show," declaring that it was "not only the worst song on the album [Up], it's quite possibly the worst song he's ever released going all the way back to the earliest days of Genesis in 1967." >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Michael R. - Las Vegas, NV
• "The Barry Williams Show" was released as the lead single from Up, an album that took nearly eight years to complete. Peter Gabriel never committed to a specific release date, often humorously answering "September" without specifying the year. This long gestation period was partly because Gabriel believed in letting creative ideas "ripen" fully before releasing them to the world, much like fruit growing heavy on a tree, ready to bear juice when it was finally ripe.