The songs Phil Collins called the best music he made
It’s never exactly been the coolest thing in the world for people to admit that they were fans of Phil Collins.
He was so omnipresent back in the 1980s it wasn’t easy to avoid him, but it’s hard not to acknowledge that songs like ‘Sussudio’ objectively sound great despite having the most confusing lyric sheet of all time. But even if Collins does have a few moments that aren’t exactly fashionable, the fact that he would go the extra mile to get the right song on the pop charts is what’s sorely lacking from a lot of great artists today.
I mean, think about it for a second. It’s not like anyone has been able to write such mature-sounding chord progressions the same way that he did, and even if they were to make an answer to ‘In the Air Tonight’, it wouldn’t hold a candle to the original. Because when you’re listening to a lot of his music, it’s something that comes from the soul long before you put pen to paper half the time.
A tune like ‘Against All Odds’ isn’t exactly one of the most thoughtful lyrics of all time, but when you listen to the melody as the chorus hits, it’s the exact right amount of melodrama to make every sound great. So if someone that tuneful was able to work magic on the pop charts, just imagine what it would be like if he managed to take a break from the hit parade and step up to the big leagues?
You could argue that prog-rock already was the “big leagues” in many respects, but when the House of Mouse came calling, it was only a matter of time before Collins got the real calls to work magic behind the camera. A lot of his previous film experiences had been cute if not harmless half the time, but anyone who grew up in the 1990s knows where they were once they first heard the songs in Tarzan for the first time.
Although Randy Newman had made fantastic songs for Toy Story before and even Billy Joel took a stab at working on Oliver and Company, Collins managed to make the kind of songs that could easily work as pop songs for a kids movie. Elton John seemed to be alone in that realm, but when you listen to ‘You’ll Be In My Heart’, most people wouldn’t bat an eye if they saw it turn up on one of his solo albums.
And while Genesis has its own place in Collins’s discography, he felt that getting to work on the Broadway version of the movie was the real peak of his powers, saying, “I had to write some extra songs and that was some of the best stuff I did. The songs in that show were me stretching my envelope as a songwriter. Why just do this? Why not expand your horizons? So I jumped at it.”
Granted, the idea of making a mint out of being on Broadway isn’t something that people would casually walk away from, but Collins was in it for more than that. He wanted to make something that would last, and when listening to the intricate stuff that turned up in tunes like ‘Son of Man’ and ‘Strangers Like Me’, it’s impossible not to feel something as the melodies soar across the Broadway stage.
Most songwriters didn’t really need to go this far when working on their material, but Collins didn’t approach it that way. He knew that his kids needed something they would remember, and you can tell that he was coming from a place of love even if he was singing about an apeman soaring through the jungle.
