"Family Snapshot" is a song written and performed by the English rock musician Peter Gabriel, appearing on his third eponymous studio album.
[3] Finally, the song transitions back to a quiet, mournful climax as the shooter, having just shot his target, remembers his childhood loneliness and desire for attention.
[3] Gabriel stated that the assassin's flashback at the end of the song was meant to express the notion that "patterns of behavior begun in childhood do carry through.
[9] In his review for Gabriel's 1980 self-titled album, Hugh Fielder of Sounds thought that "Family Snapshot" was a "cool but intimate profile of an assassin at work" and said that the song's tension modulates with "deft control".
[10] Graeme Thomson of Uncut characterised the song as a "beautiful three-part epic about an assassin’s craving for notoriety, hot-housed by childhood alienation.