No Son of Mine
1991 single by Genesis
"No Son of Mine" is a song by the English rock group Genesis, released in October 1991 by Atlantic and Virgin Records as the lead single from their 14th album, We Can't Dance (1991). It reached No. 6 on the UK singles chart and No. 12 and 6 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and Cash Box Top 100. It was also a top-10 hit in several European countries and peaked atop Canada's RPM 100 Hit Tracks chart for five weeks.
Music
The lyrics tell the story of a boy who runs away from his abusive home, and—after some reconsideration—attempts to return, only to be rejected by his father. In interviews, Phil Collins said that the lyrics are deliberately vague as to whether the narrator or his mother is the victim of the abuse.
The song has a distinctive sound heard during the intro and before the second verse. Referred to by the band as "elephantus", the sound was created by Tony Banks recording Mike Rutherford's guitar with a sampler and then playing three notes on the bottom register of the keyboard, greatly lowering the pitch. The working title of "No Son of Mine" was "Elephantus".
“No Son of Mine” enters the record as 1991 single by Genesis. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mine, single and Genesis can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“No Son of Mine” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Mine, single and Genesis provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2005671. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1991.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “No Son of Mine” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.