The rock star Phil Collins wanted to trade places with: “The critics would like me”
Any artist coming up in the 1980s would have killed to have had the kind of career Phil Collins did.
As much as he seemed to be plastered on MTV every single waking hour that the station was on, it’s not like he didn’t have some catchy tunes with either Genesis or in his solo career at the time. It would be anyone’s dream to be that inescapable, but Collins knew that it was both a gift and a curse in many respects.
Because when you think about it, overexposure is what brings down a lot of great bands. For example, let’s look at one of the bands that loved trading jabs with Collins: Oasis. Noel Gallagher had everything in his favour for Be Here Now to become a legendary record, but even if the album didn’t match up to the standards everyone had for it, it would have been treated like any other Oasis project had it not been hyped up to the moon as one of the greatest things that mankind has ever gifted rock and roll music.
And if that was already too much for people who didn’t even like rock, imagine what it would be like with one of the biggest pop stars on the planet. Yes, there were those who loved what Collins could do in Genesis, but there were also the kids that loved listening to ‘Sussudio’ on the radio, the pop listeners that couldn’t get enough of ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’, and even the sweet old ladies that heard songs like ‘Against All Odds’.
Fame can be an incredible thing, but Collins couldn’t lie when he felt it was like a prison after a while. The whole process of him becoming a star wasn’t something that happened overnight, but with everyone itching to hear the next pop marvel from him, he couldn’t help but see people like David Byrne having a lot more fun than he was whenever he worked with Talking Heads.
After all, nothing was off the table whenever a new Talking Heads record came out. In fact, their success on MTV with ‘Once In a Lifetime’ practically felt like a happy accident, and when they started working in modern pop textures into their sound on ‘Burning Down the House’, they were actively winning over fans who wouldn’t have looked twice at the same band that played ‘Psycho Killer’ back in the day.
Music was much more adventurous to them, and Collins felt like that could be a road worth going down, saying, “There’s a tendency for people to be cynical about popularity, like you’re appealing to the lowest common denominator, which is another term for trash. It’s an insulting attitude–insulting to the audience. I mean, sometimes I feel it. Like, God, I wish I were David Byrne, with this small, tight group of fans. The critics would like me.”
And without trying to pit one against each other here, what Collins is talking about is a lot closer to what his old bandmate was doing. Peter Gabriel has carved out a place on the charts by getting a lot weirder with his music, but since Collins was known as the person that turned Genesis into a pop group, he was stuck with the label far too often to transition to making any kind of outlandish record.
But even if he didn’t have the credibility that he longed for, that didn’t stop him from trying to make inroads into new territory. Every artist should be free to make whatever they want, and as much as Collins was put in a box, there was more than enough room for him to work on an album like Both Sides as well as the soundtrack for Tarzan.
