Few anticipated that Phil Collins would rank among the era’s foremost pop and adult contemporary vocalists from the 1980s forward, an outcome that astonished the performer no less than it did his audience. Short in stature and already balding, the drummer who became Genesis’s lead singer neared the age of thirty before releasing his debut solo single, “In the Air Tonight,” which rose to number two in his home country of the United Kingdom and reached the American Top 20. Between 1984 and 1990 he posted thirteen consecutive Top Ten hits on U.S. charts.
Long prior to those achievements, Collins had worked as a youthful performer, taking the role of the Artful Dodger in the 1964 London staging of Oliver! and appearing briefly in A Hard Day’s Night along with additional screen credits. His initial opportunity in music arrived in his late teens when, in 1970, he was selected as a substitute drummer for the British art-rock ensemble Genesis, all while sustaining a parallel jazz career with the group Brand X.
At that time Peter Gabriel served as Genesis’s frontman, guiding the band to modest acclaim in both Britain and America through ambitious concept albums until his sudden departure in 1974. After auditioning four hundred vocalists without finding a replacement, the remaining members invited Collins to try the microphone. The change prompted a steady simplification of the group’s sound and placed greater emphasis on his distinctive, resonant delivery. And Then There Were Three… earned gold certification in 1978, while Duke achieved still greater commercial results.
Collins issued his first solo album, Face Value, in 1981, and it surpassed the sales of any prior Genesis release. The record highlighted his voice within spare, evocative settings, most notably the stark piano-and-drums lament “In the Air Tonight,” whose atmosphere recalled John Lennon’s debut solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.
Throughout the 1980s he successfully juggled ongoing solo projects with his ongoing role in Genesis. In 1992 the band released We Can’t Dance and launched an extended tour; once that concluded, Collins delivered Both Sides in 1993, his first album to miss both a major single and multi-platinum status. He announced his permanent exit from Genesis in 1995. The next year saw the arrival of Dance Into the Light, which, despite modest chart placement, supported a well-received tour. The Hits collection appeared in 1998, followed in 1999 by his initial big-band project, Hot Night in Paris. The song cycle Testify reached stores in 2002, and his next studio solo album, Going Back, arrived in 2010, revisiting the Motown catalog that had long shaped his style and featuring three surviving Funk Brothers—guitarists Eddie Willis and Ray Monette plus bassist Bob Babbitt.
Following a period largely out of public view while he recovered from various physical ailments, Collins reemerged in 2014 to perform a few numbers at his sons’ school and to co-write material with Adele. Shortly afterward he initiated a campaign to reissue his solo catalog, mining archives for demos and live recordings to supplement the original releases. Beginning in early 2016, Warner Music issued the albums in paired sets featuring fresh portraits of Collins in place of the prior artwork. He returned to the stage that March at the Little Dreams Foundation Benefit Gala in Miami. October of the same year brought both his autobiography, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir, and the double-disc compilation The Singles. In 2017 the expansive box set Take a Look at Me Now: The Complete Studio Collection documented every studio album from 1981 to 2010. He followed that retrospective with another wide-ranging collection in 2018, Plays Well with Others, which gathered numerous collaborations spanning his career.
