“They took it out of context”: The one song Phil Collins wishes he never recorded
There has always been a bit of contention surrounding virtually everything Phil Collins got his hands on.
Anyone else would have been happy to see one of the biggest artists in the world put out this many hits at such an alarming rate, but when you have that much of one person all at once, there comes a point where even Collins’s most diehard fans needed a break from seeing him every single day on MTV. And while Collins tended to agree that he could be overexposed, not every song that made it to the top of the charts was put there by choice when he entered the studio.
But it’s not like Collins was afraid of having hits. Any other prog-rock band would have been a bit leery about having a song on the hit parade, but when he did his own version of a song like ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’, it wasn’t because he thought that the tune would give him a massive smash. He genuinely loved that kind of music, and even if the rest of the prog world wasn’t ready for him to play along to his favourite Motown hits, it didn’t really matter once he started to gain traction on the charts.
And before people start talking about Collins being everywhere all at once, let’s put ourselves in his shoes for a quick second. Here’s one of the biggest drummers in the world who has suddenly been given the keys to the musical kingdom, the minute that ‘In the Air Tonight’ starts roaring up the charts. If you had the opportunity to work with everyone from Eric Clapton to Led Zeppelin to the members of ABBA to Philip Bailey, are you supposed to not take any of those opportunities once you pick up the phone?
Absolutely not. Collins was well within his rights to make the best music he could with as many people as he could, but when he tried to balance out his music career with his bid to be an actor, there were more than a few times when things fell through. He worked wonders when making soundtrack songs like ‘Against All Odds’, but when working on ‘A Groovy Kind of Love’, Collins felt that the whole track was never supposed to be sung by him in the first place when he sang it.
What he came up with only amounted to a demo, and even though it sounded great, the original plan was to have someone else sing the tune while he starred in the movie Buster. When you already have the performance out of the lead actor, though, what the hell was stopping them from having a number one record and the potential to get the movie off the ground once the single started to storm the charts?
Collins would have been happy enough getting another hit, but he felt that the song was never right for his image at the time, saying, “I didn’t sit down to make ‘Groovy Kind Of Love’ a hit. I did two verses, gave them to the producer, and they took it out of context. It was suddenly made a key song, so we reworked it for the soundtrack album and, of course, it was released as a single. To me it wasn’t a solo thing but that’s how the average person saw it.”
While this might be one of the first times when Collins fought tooth and nail against having a hit, it’s not like the song doesn’t fit within his wheelhouse. He had become used to making ballads like this, and even if the song is more than a little bit morose even by his standards, it does at least fit in with the other pieces of adult contemporary that were happening around that time like Richard Marx.
If you listen to But Seriously right afterwards, though, you could tell that Collins was trying everything he could to move away from that sound. He didn’t get into this business to be a ballad writer exclusively, and if he was going to win back the favour of his audience, he was going to need something with a bit more of an edge.
