The charity single that ruined Phil Collins’ seven-week run at number one
Listen, no one wants to have to defend Phil Collins, especially when the concept of charity is involved.
But equally, there was no denying that the musical titan was at the peak of his powers in the mid-1980s, and there was very little with the ability to stand in his way. Rightly or wrongly, he was the undisputed king of the charts, and anytime one particular song slipped from its top spot, there was often another one lined up, waiting in the wings to replace it.
You could argue that he even had the good karma to go with it at the time. During that hotbed musical midpoint of the ‘80s, he was a stalwart of Live Aid – and indeed, made history as the only artist to perform at both the London and Philadelphia concerts, albeit with the help of Concorde to get him across the pond in time.
He dutifully played the drums on ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, and in many ways, paid back what he was robbing from the diverse artistic soul of the charts through his own philanthropic contributions. Fair was fair, and anyone could see that the charity work he was providing alongside his own seismic success was more than many could say they were doing.
It does just seem, maybe a tiny bit cruel, in this sense, that another charity number had to slap down Collins in the height of his reign of glory, making his climb back to the top an arguably unethical battle of wills. He had already spent four weeks at number one in the album chart with No Jacket Required, only for We Are the World to come along and steal his thunder.
How did Phil Collins overcome ‘We Are The World’?
No one could have undermined the efforts of the star charity group USA For Africa with their campaign for famine relief in Ethiopia, but there was a catch to this. Our old friend Collins himself was actually part of the role call, not playing a central part, but playing the drums in the background of the main track.
So, technically speaking, he knocked his own song off the number one spot over the course of that heady spring of 1985, only to return to his throne once We Are The World had had its moment. As much as he had a massive number of counterparts behind him – it’s not like Michael Jackson, Prince, Tina Turner and all the rest were unfamiliar with a number one or two – Collins was very much the mighty leader of the moment.
With the goodness in his heart to allow the charity track to take the helm for a few weeks, it was clearly only right that afterwards, he returned to his deserved top place with No Jacket Required. That brought his stint of weeks at number one to seven, admittedly with a three-week intermission in the middle.
In a lot of ways, that chart tidbit only goes to prove the original point – that in the mid-1980s, Collins was well and truly a god of all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-consuming power. Even when charity was at the front and centre, his wrath was never far from view. Indeed, sometimes he could even be right at the heart of it.
