The song Phil Collins is still “embarrassed by” five decades later
Rock and roll has seen some pretty regrettable outfits over the years. Stars bask in their own flamboyance, wearing feather-lined jackets, skin-tight flairs or maybe nothing at all. But I’ve often thought creative liberation is part of the point of being a rockstar – in the sense that, if you can’t wear transparent plastic trousers on stage, where can you?
But despite some of the god-awful outfits rock and roll has seen over the years, I don’t think there’s any more embarrassing than Phil Collins’.
Yes, that famed signature outfit of Collins, which had him dressed like a BMW salesman on the world stage. A pair of ill-fitting pleats, an Oxford shirt tucked in, and a headset microphone that a call centre manager would have been proud of. Phil, just because your music appears on every Top Gear driving playlist doesn’t mean you have to dress like one of its presenters.
But to his credit, the outfit matched the attitude. Collins has always been known as one of the most clinically accurate musicians of the era, whose on-stage charm isn’t steeped in a sloppy sense of charisma but a brutally precise ability to play the drums. He was the powerhouse of the 1980s rock sound, so no one really cared that he turned up on stage dressed as the embarrassing dad of the genre.
Because, in some strange way, it was truly refreshing – he knew full well who he was as an artist and didn’t slip into the trap of cosplaying as a rockstar. The music was clearer, more directed and focused for it. Collins was not releasing music with a wilful intent of just filling a sonic hole. Everything he did needed purpose.
But on one song, that detailed attitude turned into obsessive confusion, resulting in an instrumental breakdown that got lost in the pursuit of innovation. The 1991 track ‘Living Forever’ now lives forever in Collins’ mind as a song that tried too hard to innovate and became cringeworthy as a result.
“‘Living Forever’ for example, on We Can’t Dance, I think it is, that flashes into my brain,” he said with a wince when asked about a song of his that makes him recoil. Even years later, it still stands out as a sore regret in his back catalogue as both a solo artist and with the band.
He went on to explain that the instrumental sequence in the middle is the moment to blame. But ultimately, it was the sound of Genesis trying to evolve with the changing times of rock.
As Collins looked back on his career, with the benefit of hindsight, he realised that the exploration of ideas that felt contextual in the moment was bound to experience growing pains when the sonic plates of culture began to shift.
Peacefully, he told Drumeo, “I mean, there’s plenty of things listening back that I’m probably a bit embarrassed about. You know, I mean, having good ears and growing up and having a bit of taste, you see things a bit more in perspective. I mean, there was a time when all the holes got filled in and those are the things that I didn’t like listening to particularly now.”
Not all music is timeless, then, as Collins rightly remarks. Some songs are – see his greatest hits for reference – while others get stuck in the mud of cultural trends and come out the other side covered in filth that has you turning your nose up. But at least Collins always had his wardrobe to rely on, which, no matter the era you looked at it from, was absolutely dreadful.
