The 1986 Genesis song Phil Collins felt uncomfortable singing: “I found it tricky”
When you look back on Phil Collins‘ career, whether you are perusing his solo records, collaborations, or work with Genesis, you’re treated to a plethora of different styles, sounds, and substances.
Few artists have navigated as many musical shifts as Collins. From progressive rock epics with Genesis to chart-dominating pop singles, he consistently adapted without losing the qualities that made his work distinctive.
However, despite the variation present throughout his music, one thing that remains consistent is the emotion with which he writes. His lyrics, whether discussing personal experiences or those from a distance, are easy to latch on to and connect with. It’s this connection that keeps people coming back for more.
Collins was a prolific songwriter. He knew how to write in a way that tapped into people’s inner emotions. At the same time, he had a way with instrumentation that meant he knew exactly when to give and when to take. By holding off on segments of songs and giving everything to others, the emotion he was trying to convey was given more depth.
The point is, everything made perfect sense to Phil Collins. If he was writing a sad song, the instrumentation had to be equally sad, which often meant minimalism. If he was angry or frustrated, the drums grew heavier as he incorporated more fills and energy, adding to the dynamic nature of the track. Happy songs were equally happy in how they were put together. Everything had its place.
For Collins, songwriting was rarely about abstraction for its own sake. Every musical choice needed to serve the story or feeling at the heart of a song. It’s for this reason that he started to struggle when performing Genesis songs written by Tony Banks. Banks enjoyed the occasional metaphor, and most of the time, when we write in the style of metaphors, we do so in a way that makes sense to us but might not be comprehensible to others.
Collins admitted that he had particular trouble singing the song ‘Domino’ from the band’s 1986 album, Invisible Touch, because he was left confused by many of the lyrics. It wasn’t that Collins disliked the lyrics per se, but more that he couldn’t get behind something he didn’t thoroughly understand.
“I found it tricky,” he said, “I used to think, ‘How do I sing this thing about double glazing? How do I sing this and convince an audience?’ I found it awkward, because I was getting more personal in my songwriting, and here I was singing things I didn’t understand – just syllables.”
Collins isn’t on his own with this critique of songwriting, either. When you’re a musician who wants to write something universally applicable that speaks to a wider audience, when you begin singing lyrics that feel disingenuous or that aren’t your own, it’s often the case that artists start to disassociate. Bruce Springsteen had a similar problem when he was asked to make an album of covers as picking songs he could sing and do justice became a near-impossible task.
“Initially, it was really hard,” he said, “I was picking the material, and I’m going, ‘It’s hard to sing somebody else’s songs and get them to sound authentic, and it’s coming out of you’. So I made an entire record that I threw out.”
Singing authentic music seems to be a double-edged sword. While you create songs that connect with people, you also become more particular about what you perform, as Phil Collins perfectly personifies.
Ultimately, Collins’ discomfort with lyrics he couldn’t connect to helps explain why his own songwriting resonated so strongly with audiences. He believed that emotional honesty was not just desirable but essential, and that commitment became one of the defining characteristics of his career.
