“Very personal”: How revisiting his own 1993 protest song gave Phil Collins a mini existential crisis
While the main prerogative of writing music is to make something that will last forever and feel timeless, Phil Collins has unfortunately found himself wondering why he ever released certain songs of his.
Of course, there’s always going to be the potential for some songs to feel as though they’re forever rooted in a particular time period, whether that’s down to stylistic choices that were made that are evidently of a moment in time, or if it’s more as a result of writing about a cultural or historical event that will seem like an artefact when listened back to in the future.
However, in both of these instances, it’s still entirely possible to create something that manages to be both a relic of the time it was created and still perfectly enjoyable when revisited decades later. Some protest songs from the 1960s and ‘70s, when the Vietnam War and civil rights movements were happening, are still regarded as being significant and important tracks that haven’t lost their punch, despite being over half a century old in many cases.
But for Collins, when he chose to revisit two of his old albums in 2016 for deluxe reissues, he was left wondering whether it was possible to remove one particular song from the tracklisting, partially due to how he’d grown to dislike it over the years, and partially because of how it spoke to his feelings on a relevant topic at the time that would be quite as relevant to a contemporary audience.
While there were no glaring issues with the tracklisting for his 1981 debut album, Face Value, it was his 1993 album, Both Sides, that had one questionable inclusion that Collins was determined to see if he could avoid having on the updated version of the album, almost driving him to the point of a small nervous breakdown.
During an interview with CBS News following the reissues of both albums in early 2016, Collins explained his dilemma and how he spent ages trying to figure out a suitable workaround.
“There was one track where I was wondering whether it should’ve gone on: ‘We Wait and We Wonder’,” Collins explained, before elaborating on why it stood out from the remainder of the album. “The rest of the material was very personal. ‘We Wait and We Wonder’ was more of my thoughts on the situation in Northern Ireland.”
He continued, reenacting how he weighed up what the knock-on effect would have been, and how many other changes he would have subsequently wanted to make to the album had he been brave enough to give ‘We Wait and We Wonder’ the axe. “So I thought, ‘Should I take that song off? I’ve got an opportunity now to do that,’” he added. “But then you start thinking about things like, ‘Well, should I rewrite the lyrics to something? ’Cause I can sing that better.’ And then you start digging a big hole for yourself.”
In the end, Collins opted to leave the album intact in its original form, and while ‘We Wait and We Wonder’ is perhaps one of the weaker moments on the album and sticks out for not following the same thematic patterns as the rest of the record, revisiting is not the same as revisionism. There’s a good case for allowing yourself to be reminded of how you’ve changed as a person and artist by accepting that songs you might have changed your mind on, and thankfully, Collins was able to come to terms with that.
