The 2000s band Phil Collins called “the best new band” around
Phil Collins has never been one to have his finger on the pulse of music in the past few years.
He knows what he likes every single time he turns on the radio, and sometimes all he needs is the right record for him to start paying attention again. And while he’s never going to be the same drummer that he used to be or have the desire to put out anything new in the next few years, he did think that there were some bands that were carrying on what a pop-rock band should sound like.
But part of what made Collins great was that he didn’t exactly fit into any of the boxes a pop star was supposed to be in. Genesis was never going to be pop stars in the traditional sense with Peter Gabriel in front of the microphone, and while Collins did eventually become a solo star in his own right, are we really going to sit here and pretend that his star power was as gripping as what someone like Madonna or Prince was doing at the same time?
In fact, a lot of what made Collins dorky is also what made him so lovable. He seemed like someone’s cool uncle every single time he worked on one of his albums, and even if he did come off as a touch corny every single time he made one of his tunes, he knew that corny could sometimes be good when you’re chasing after songs that are going to touch people’s hearts at the end of the day.
No one has ever made a tender ballad while trying to be cool, and ‘You’ll Be In My Heart’ still hits just as well these days because of how well Collins was able to toe the line between schmaltzy and tuneful. But when looking at the rock and roll charts around the turn of the century, Collins knew that there weren’t that many people trying to do the same thing that he was doing.
The pop-rock sphere had lost a lot of its guts over the years, and while there were still bands like The Strokes out there trying to bring an edge to rock and roll, Collins ended up gravitating towards pop music more often than not. He always had his reservations with old school rock and roll to begin with, and when hearing what his kids were listening to, he figured that One Republic had what it took to be one of the biggest bands in the world.
Although the band are much more of a pop band than anything else, Collins knew that they were chasing after something much bigger than he heard them play live, saying, “Another one that my sons have turned me onto. They played in Geneva and I bought tickets as a surprise for Nicholas’ birthday, because he really, really loved the band. This particular song I thought it was so hooky, so we went to see them and they were great live. [They are] very hooky, one of the best new bands that I’ve heard.”
And it’s not like Collins didn’t know what he was talking about, especially given where Ryan Tedder has gone over the years. Yes, he is responsible for more than a few songs that have been overplayed into the ground at this point, but there are also more than a few times where he has been able to work magic for other artists, even if he is responsible for one of Paul McCartney’s more embarrassing recent songs like ‘Fuh You’.
Still, Collins’s penchant for melodies has always been second to none, and when he heard someone else who had that musical bug, he was never going to discount that. One Republic probably weren’t going to take over the world the same way that The Beatles used to, but Collins knew they were offering kids something a bit more substantive than the usual pop schlock out there.
