Apart the final keyboard bridge which is typical of Tony, the song is based on Mike's guitar chords.
Maybe Phil came up with the phrase "Tell me why this is a land of confusion". 
TotW 10/24/2022 - 10/30/2022: GENESIS - Land Of Confusion
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I thought they all wrote the music for each track, then individually wrote the lyrics. I got this impression mostly from Mike's comments about Dreaming While You Sleep, where they had written then song and Tony wanted to write the lyrics but Mike made the case for himself because he had a good idea and he ended up doing it.
Anyway, I like Land of Confusion. It's relatively straight for a Genesis song, it rocks, and it's held up well over time.
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I thought they all wrote the music for each track, then individually wrote the lyrics. I got this impression mostly from Mike's comments about Dreaming While You Sleep, where they had written then song and Tony wanted to write the lyrics but Mike made the case for himself because he had a good idea and he ended up doing it.
Anyway, I like Land of Confusion. It's relatively straight for a Genesis song, it rocks, and it's held up well over time.
They certainly worked on the basis of starting with a blank page in the studio so it was generally collaborative music-wise while yes, as you say, I think one of them would write the lyrics. But we do hear about occasional group-credited ones where one of them was the prime mover - eg I've often heard that Duchess, Keep It Dark and The Brazilian were largely Banks (probably unsurprisingly for Brazilian). So for all I know MR mainly wrote the LoC music, it's just that I've always only heard he did the words.
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They certainly worked on the basis of starting with a blank page in the studio so it was generally collaborative music-wise while yes, as you say, I think one of them would write the lyrics. But we do hear about occasional group-credited ones where one of them was the prime mover - eg I've often heard that Duchess, Keep It Dark and The Brazilian were largely Banks (probably unsurprisingly for Brazilian). So for all I know MR mainly wrote the LoC music, it's just that I've always only heard he did the words.
This makes sense to me. I'm sure given their individual strengths that over the course of 5 or 6 albums across a decade, there were some instances (like the ones you pointed out) where one of them would have a strong musical idea that would drive a song.
The more I think about it, their workflow of most songs coming from group jams must be relatively unique among hugely successful bands?
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it's been documented several times, that Mike wrote land of confusion as his protest song.
