The singer Phil Collins crowned the most important of the 2010s: “Great”
In a world full of rock and roll gods, Phil Collins tended to feel like the odd man out a lot of the time.
He wasn’t a bad performer by any stretch of the imagination, but when every other rock and roll star seemed to present themselves as one of the greatest musicians in the world, Collins’ stage setup always felt like someone’s uncle coming up onstage and somehow managing to perform some of the best tunes that anyone had ever heard. But there’s a good chance that were it not for Genesis, Collins wouldn’t have fit into the traditional rock and roll format at all.
Make no mistake, he had musical influences from rock bands like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, but he was more interested in finding out what was going on in the world of R&B half the time. He loved Motown just as much as the Fab Four a lot of the time, and when you listen to a lot of his solo work, you can see where he’s getting a lot of his influences in the ballads that he writes.
There might be a handful of tunes that are indebted to people like The Beatles, but even when you look at the people that he was producing, Collins didn’t like the idea of making a straight-ahead rock record. David Crosby was interested in testing the limits of what rock and roll could be, Eric Clapton was indebted to the greatest names in blues and R&B by the time he reached the 1980s, and working with anyone in ABBA wasn’t going to earn Collins many cool points with the rock faithful.
And that’s half the reason why his music has endured over the years. His greatest songs are the ones that capture the kind of emotion that no one else could, and while he does have a few clunkers in there like ‘Sussudio’ or lines that can be a little strange on his later records, he was always interested in making music that sounded timeless from the moment people heard it. So when he got the opportunity to work with someone like Adele, it should have been a match made in heaven.
Collins had practically perfected the idea of making lush ballads like Adele could, but he felt that he couldn’t get anything together in time. His sound fit perfectly with the kind of sophisticated pop songs that she was writing around that time, but Collins knew not to get too broken up over not working with one of the biggest singers of all time.
He could rest easy knowing how many records he had sold, and when looking at her track record, Collins could at least admit that she was a generational talent, saying, “She wasn’t ready to do the record, but that piece of music still exists, and someone suggested to me that it could happen in the future. I hadn’t really thought of it, but if she wants to work together in the future, I’m fine with it. She’s great. I think she’s one of the most important artists in recent years. She is such a strong person, and her musical identity is so strong. She’s there for good, you know?”
That brand of blue-eyed soul might not be what the rest of the world wanted to hear all the time, but Adele exists in the same timeless bubble that Collins does. Both of their sounds didn’t need to be the most en vogue thing to move mountains, and even when songs sounded more synthetic on the charts, hearing a tune like ‘Easy on Me’ is the reason why she stands out amongst the other pop divas of the world.
Others can try to create lush arrangements of their songs or smother as many effects on their voice to create a work of art, but a lot of Adele’s appeal comes from the raw power in her voice. She could make the best songs of anyone’s career with only a piano and her voice, and that’s the kind of musical gift that no pop listener should take for granted.
