The 1993 album that made Phil Collins want to quit: “Maybe it’s all over”
Throughout the entire 1980s, I don’t think that Phil Collins ever understood the meaning of the word ‘stop’.
There were a million different avenues for an artist like him to go down throughout his career, but even when making some of the biggest hits of the decade, that wasn’t enough for him when it came time to work with everyone from Eric Clapton to Philip Bailey to reforming Led Zeppelin on a whim because he thought he was up for it. But even though fans had had enough by the time that Collins reached the next decade, he felt that his retirement from music was a long time coming.
Playing at that level for that long is bound to take its toll on someone’s mental and physical health, and for someone who put his body into every single drum hit he made, Collins wasn’t suddenly going to be playing at the same pace he used to be. He didn’t want to split up Genesis by any stretch, but he just didn’t want to be a part of yet another album where he needed to give his all into making tunes that were right for the radio.
He didn’t even like the idea of being a pop singer when he first made his debut, and while Face Value did at least have a few great tunes scattered throughout its runtime, Collins knew it was time to give his audience what they didn’t know they wanted. He had a lot on his mind after going through a breakup, and while Both Sides did have him playing almost every single instrument on the finished record, he wanted the chance to make a record that would stand alongside the greatest reflective albums he had ever heard.
But Collins was never someone who was being fawned over like some critical darling. If anything, the public seemed to get more and more annoyed whenever they heard some of his pop tunes, and while Both Sides did end up sounding great all things considered, it was far too late for him to make the same kind of impact that he did when ‘Sussudio’ was at the height of its popularity.
And while Collins had a lot more left in him, the fact that the album bit the dust was the first time he felt like he didn’t need to trouble the pop charts anymore, saying, “When I did Both Sides, which is my personal best record, and a lot of people didn’t go for it, I thought, ‘Hmm, maybe it’s all over.’ Fair enough. I had a huge success, so I did more grown-up things outside the marketplace. [Testify] is only out because I found the songs irresistible.”
Collins still had a lot more gas left in the tank, but it’s no surprise that one of the biggest financial successes that he had that year was his work on the Tarzan soundtrack. ‘The House of Mouse’ was always going to be a different beast than the pop charts, and even if Collins got some of his best-known songs from around that time in ‘You’ll Be In My Heart’, it made a lot more sense why kids would be going for it rather than those who liked him for ‘Invisible Touch’.
Since Testify was also a bit more dreary than what everyone was used to, though, it’s not a shock why Collins eventually got off the musical merry-go-round to a certain degree. Everything he’s done since then has usually been reissues or covers albums for him to scratch that classics itch, but he knew that there was no point in him trying to compete with the likes of Adele when he entered the 2010s or anything.
He had had enough, and considering how many people go back to those ballads, deciding to call things off makes Collins one of the smarter men in the music industry. He understood that he wasn’t going to get better than those glory years, so it made sense for him to close up shop when he was still making tunes that were half-decent.
