The 1993 album Phil Collins was the most proud of: “It’s my favourite”
Phil Collins‘ entire solo career may be one of the happiest accidents in rock and roll history.
Even though he could hold everything down with Genesis, the emotional exorcism that Collins went through to create his debut solo album, Face Value, resulted in two careers for the price of one. When talking about the best albums he was ever involved in, Collins always felt that one of his solo releases was his proudest achievement.
Before Collins had gotten to show his chops as a singer, he was already a master of percussion. Leading up to his work with Genesis, Collins had been serving time in various progressive rock outfits and even had the chance to work on George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass before getting the call to audition.
While Collins was known to take over one song on vocals instead of Peter Gabriel, it wasn’t until The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway that the frontman had issues with their touring schedule. Wanting to spend more time with his family, Gabriel parted ways with the group, leading Collins to step up from behind the drumkit on the album A Trick of the Tail.
When Collins started to go through various marital troubles in the early 1980s, he announced that he would be taking a break from the band. As he tried to pick up the pieces of his marriage, Collins would channel most of his anger and sadness into Face Value, which earned him massive singles like ‘In The Air Tonight’.
Part of what made Collins such a compelling solo artist was that he never attempted to separate vulnerability from pop music. While many major stars of the 1980s leaned heavily into spectacle and polished personas, Collins often built his biggest songs around very personal feelings of loneliness, frustration and heartbreak.
That emotional openness gave albums like Face Value a sincerity that connected with listeners far beyond the progressive rock audience Genesis had cultivated during the previous decade.
By the time Both Sides arrived in 1993, Collins was also reacting against the increasingly glossy production style that had dominated mainstream pop throughout the late 1980s. Recording much of the album alone allowed him to create something more intimate and unguarded, stripping away some of the commercial expectations attached to his name.
Although it never matched the cultural impact of his earlier solo work, the record revealed a more reflective and experimental side of Collins that many listeners and critics only fully appreciated years later.
For the rest of his career, Collins would continue to balance Genesis with his solo work, often working on them simultaneously. Although the frontman was able to rule the 1980s pop scene with his band and solo, he decided to get more introspective when working on the next phase of his career.
Outside of his band, Collins was already known for working behind the scenes as well. For all the songs he could put on the charts, the drummer would follow in the footsteps of fellow legends like Elton John by going into the film world, eventually creating the music for Disney’s Tarzan.
Having left Genesis in the early 1990s, albums like Both Sides would become more experimental by Collins’ standards. Instead of relying on rock instrumentation, the longer track lengths allowed Collins to spread out, making songs that could be saccharine one minute and heartbreakingly honest the next.
When talking about Both Sides years later, Collins thought that it was one of the personal high points of his career, telling Consequence, “An album like Both Sides did fall through the cracks. I mean, it sold well. But it didn’t sell as well as the one before. I am just so proud of that record. It’s my favourite album”.
For all of the great songs that appear on the album, Both Sides is one of the few albums that featured Collins playing everything by himself, producing most of it at home before it was fully mixed. As opposed to the extravagant productions found on Genesis records, Both Sides is the perfect example of seeing Collins without any creative masks on.
