You will probably not be surprised to learn that Peter Gabriel was dealing with some stuff when he wrote the lyrics for Digging In The Dirt.  He was in the midst of a breakup with Rosanna Arquette, he was deep into therapy, and he was studying the lives of men who were on Death Row awaiting execution.  Gabriel was also reading a book, called Why We Kill, that suggested that all murderers share certain things in common, one of those being an uncontrollable anger that, much like the wasps in song’s video, can not be swatted away.  All of this contributed to a song that was one of Gabriel’s darkest, with the “dirt” standing in as a metaphor for his own personal issues.

The video features Peter Gabriel in a number of disturbing situations.  When he’s not being buried alive, he’s either arguing with a woman in a car or he’s being attacked by wasps.  The woman in the video was played by Francesca Gonshaw, who is probably best known for playing waitress Maria Recamier on the popular BBC sitcom ‘Allo ‘Allo!  

The video features a return to the claymation and the stop motion animation that was used in the video for Gabriel’s Sledgehammer.  What was used to lighthearted effect in Gabriel’s previous videos  is used to tell a much darker story in Digging in the Dirt.