Singing (and Playing) With Phil Collins
Phil Collins whose birthday is today . Happy Birthday BTW . has performed with, beside his Genesis colleagues, . myriad of bands or solo artists of all genres. We have selected twelve of them.
They are . Genesis, Daryl Stuermer, Laura Pausini, Sting, Lamont Dozier, Lara Fabian, David Crosby . Eric Clapton, Chester Thompson, Arnold Mcculler, Fred White, The Who, Quincy Jones, The Phil Collins Big Band
Here, they are reunited in one glorious playlist. Enjoy!
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Tracklist
![]() 1 . Genesis . A Trick Of The Tail“A Trick of the Tail” channels the literary whimsy of William Golding’s “The Inheritors” into a narrative steeped in progressive rock flamboyance. Tony Banks stitches together a tale of a mythical Beast lured into humanity’s less-than-hospitable fold, a premise that sits uneasily between charm and bleak allegory. With Phil Collins stepping forward as lead vocalist for the first time, the lyrics bounce over instrumentation that flirts with the melodic warmth of The Beatles’ “Getting Better,” only to pivot into something distinctly Genesis. The oddball promotional video, where Collins shrinks down to piano-size via rudimentary chroma keying, underscores the band’s burgeoning willingness to pair music with surreal visual flourishes. It’s catchy enough but resists integration into your subconscious, teetering between pop accessibility and prog intricacy. Meanwhile, “Los Endos” delivers a sweeping instrumental coda that feels less interested in tying up loose ends and more in flexing the band’s technical proficiency. Multiple themes from earlier tracks resurface, wrapped in a veneer of symphonic rock bravado, giving the album a circularity that progressive rock insists upon, whether it earns it or not. The collaborative effort of Banks, Hackett, Rutherford, and Collins results in a layered piece that feels like a victory lap more than a culmination. Still, the sense of monumental confidence in “Los Endos” adds an exclamation point to an album already brimming with self-assured risks. Genesis here straddles two poles—the earnest storytelling of their Peter Gabriel era and the emerging accessibility defining Collins’s reign—creating work that both perplexes and charms in equal measure. |
![]() 2 . Daryl Stuermer . The Roof Is LeakingPhil Collins’ “The Roof Is Leaking,” tucked into his game-changing debut “Face Value,” emerges as an oddball, yet compelling, break from the album’s otherwise polished pop veneer. With its mix of Delta blues and country twang, the track insists on taking its sweet time, like it’s more interested in sitting you down for a grim story than hustling to the radio waves. Daryl Stuermer’s banjo contributions bob and weave through the song’s stark atmosphere, bringing a rawness that feels refreshing—if not slightly jarring—compared to Collins’ usual repertoire of drum-heavy anthems. Thematically, “The Roof Is Leaking” lives up to its title, narrating a mini-drama of domestic disarray, perhaps inspired by Collins’ unraveling personal life at the time. As part of the single release for “In the Air Tonight,” this track found itself in interesting company, a thematic cousin to the heartbreak that defined much of the album. In essence, the song occupies a curious space: too peculiar to be forgettable, too niche to define Collins’ work as a whole. Its inclusion in 1983’s Grammy-nominated video compilation is no small feat, though, once again highlighting the unexpected range Collins wanted to unleash post-Genesis escape. For all its rough edges and somber tone, Collins and Stuermer turn “The Roof Is Leaking” into an oddly endearing misfit, a moment where art gives a nod to messiness instead of avoiding it. |
![]() 3 . Laura Pausini . Separate LivesPhil Collins’ “Separate Lives,” a melodramatic duet that originally paired him with Marilyn Martin, finds a new emotional landscape in Laura Pausini’s live renditions alongside Collins himself. This Stephen Bishop-penned ballad screams ’80s heartbreak with its piano-led arrangement and theatrical vocals, but Pausini injects her signature finesse into these live reinterpretations. Her voice, rich and operatic, adds a continental depth to the bare confessionals of the lyrics. The song’s cinematic origins—serving as a key emotional cue in 1985’s “White Nights”—are almost impossible to shake. Pausini and Collins’ performances lean into this built-in drama, often flirting with but never quite collapsing into self-parody. Instead, their vocal chemistry, particularly during live duets like their 2017 “Dreaming on the Beach” performance, feels like a masterclass in controlled nostalgia. It’s a dialogue between two artists who understand their roles here: delivering high-dose sentimentality without overdressing it. Still, “Separate Lives” as a live offering remains a divisive experience—some might call it transcendent while others may dismiss it as a relic clinging too hard to its own melancholic grandeur. The staging, minimal but deliberate, places heavy emphasis on the vocals and lyrics, ensuring the focus doesn’t drift beyond the song’s confessional backbone. Yet, there’s a risk of these performances feeling too polished, as though pre-packed for moments of orchestrated awe rather than raw connection. The original recording’s chart-topping success—dominating the Billboard Hot 100 and beyond—underscored its shmaltzy charm. But do live versions, no matter how technically precise or emotionally charged, carry the same weight? Pausini’s presence undoubtedly enriches the song’s texture, but it also introduces an aesthetic that could alienate purists. Ultimately, these collaborations serve as a reminder that revisiting classics is about threading the fine line between homage and reinvention. |
![]() 4 . Sting . Long Long Way To Go“Long Long Way to Go” wears its melancholy like a tailored suit, fitting snugly within the polished framework of Phil Collins’s massively successful 1985 album, *No Jacket Required.* Though buried within the tracklist, the song finds itself elevated by Sting’s backing vocals, a pairing born out of the camaraderie forged during the recording of Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” The track gives off a displaced energy, as lush synth arrangements and downtempo beats quietly cradle a lyrical exploration of global despair and passive inaction, with Collins’s delivery balancing between resignation and quiet anger. “While I sit here trying to think of things to say / Someone lies bleeding in a field somewhere,” he laments, embodying the detached sorrow of a news anchor watching calamity unfold from behind a sterile desk. Sting’s subdued harmonies interject with a ghostly resonance, affirming the song’s thematic weight without ever overpowering its delicate structure. Its placement in shows like *Miami Vice* and *Cold Case* suggests that the song’s desolate emotional landscape creates memorable atmospheres, perfectly tailored for narratives drenched in tension and moral ambiguity. While the song didn’t see a single release, its longevity rests not in radio airtime but in its introspective mood—one that bridges the slick excess of 1980s pop production with a rare, somber depth. For an album teeming with hits engineered to dominate airwaves, this track feels like a quiet act of rebellion, whispering truths the era often preferred to ignore. It doesn’t demand attention, but it rewards those who linger. |
![]() 5 . Lamont Dozier . The Quiet’S Too Loud“The Quiet’s Too Loud” by Lamont Dozier is the kind of track that sneaks up on you, not with bombast but with atmospheric unease. Released in 1991, it emerges from Dozier’s album “Inside Seduction,” a project that flexes his post-Motown muscles with a sleek, early ’90s R&B veneer. The collaboration with Phil Collins isn’t immediate headline material, but in hindsight, it feels like a low-key meeting of minds—Dozier’s Motown pedigree meshing with Collins’ polished, arena-pop sensibilities. The song’s production wraps its listener in a swath of drum machines and cool, nocturnal synths, a sound that feels haunting in its sparseness. Dozier’s vocal delivery carries the weight of decades in the music industry, occasionally cracking enough to remind you that pain often hides in restraint. Its chart presence was modest—peaking at an unremarkable 136 on the Australian ARIA charts—but its obscurity only adds to its enigmatic allure. Lyrically, it’s more musings than narrative, leaving enough space for listeners to find their own melancholy within its reflective folds. If you’re expecting visual flair or a music video, look elsewhere; its absence feels intentional, as if the song insists you focus only on what you hear. Ultimately, “The Quiet’s Too Loud” works best in the twilight hours: headphones on, lights off, and a willingness to confront the stillness in yourself. |
![]() 6 . Lara Fabian . True ColorsLara Fabian teams up with Phil Collins for a rendition of “True Colors,” originally a Cyndi Lauper classic that wears its sentimentality on its sleeve like a badge of honor. The performance takes place on Christmas Day 2005, during a broadcast for the Little Dreams Foundation on Swiss television, mixing holiday charity warmth with a dose of nostalgia. Fabian, a voice tailor-made for vocal acrobatics, meets Collins, who brings his signature no-frills delivery, creating an oddly complementary duet that feels like silk brushing up against denim. The arrangement itself remains faithful to the original, avoiding reinvention but holding tightly to its emotional core, a safe choice for an audience that isn’t here to be challenged. While the collaboration doesn’t spark fireworks of innovation, it does offer a quiet kind of charm, serving its purpose within the sentimental, televisual context of the event without overstaying its welcome. A performance that’s more occasion than reinvention, its earnestness compensates for its lack of daring. |
![]() 7 . David Crosby . HeroDavid Crosby’s “Hero” carries a certain cinematic weight that extends beyond its soft-rock veneer. This 1993 collaboration with Phil Collins merges Crosby’s confessional songwriting with Collins’ polished production acumen. If you’re expecting the laid-back West Coast harmonies Crosby is often associated with, prepare for something slicker, though not without emotional grit. The track oscillates between reflective storytelling and a swelling, almost anthemic production style that seems engineered for radio play in its era. The lyrics offer an introspective narrative on complex relationships, with lines like “And the reason that she loved him was the reason I loved him too” standing out for their raw vulnerability. Whether autobiographical or allegorical, they peel back layers of Crosby’s own turbulent life, hinting at themes of redemption and familial bonds. It’s a moment of human frailty, spun into something both universal and intimate. Phil Collins’ fingerprints on this track are unmistakable. Beyond co-writing the song, he contributes a layered arrangement of drums, keyboards, and drum machine. The production, while impeccably clean, risks veering dangerously close to over-polished, though Collins’ vocal harmonies provide a welcome dynamic. His influence might alienate Crosby purists while intriguing others who prefer a more contemporary edge. The accompanying music video, featuring a prison narrative intercut with nostalgic home-movie snapshots, feels almost painfully on the nose. Crosby’s portrayal of an inmate visited by his son and wife edges into melodrama but effectively underscores the song’s themes. If nothing else, it’s a visual footnote in the era of emotive, storytelling-driven music videos that dominated channels like MTV in the early ‘90s. Chart performance-wise, “Hero” didn’t exactly fly high, peaking modestly at #44 on the Billboard Top 100. Still, its time on the charts hinted at some resonance, especially during an era when adult contemporary audiences were hunting for emotional satiation disguised in Top 40 trappings. Beyond the numbers, it alternately feels like a heartfelt personal statement and a calculated attempt to survive the shifting demands of early ‘90s pop culture. “Hero” straddles an intriguing line between Crosby’s turbulent personal narrative and Collins’ glossy pop ethos. The result? A song that feels at once personal and manufactured, deeply felt yet undeniably shaped for maximum accessibility. Whether you classify it as an authentic cry from the heart or an overproduced artifact of its time, it lives firmly in the gray space where confessional songwriting meets commercial ambition. |
![]() 8 . Eric Clapton . In The Air Tonight“In The Air Tonight,” often misattributed to Eric Clapton thanks to pop culture’s game of telephone, lives rent-free in the darker recesses of the collective music memory. Written by Phil Collins post-divorce, it wades neck-deep into the murk of betrayal, regret, and quiet rage, making it less of a song and more of a brooding thunderhead of emotion set to music. The iconic drum break—so sharp and sudden it’s practically a primal scream—remains an insurmountable watermark in pop and rock history, inspiring air-drum enthusiasts and meme culture alike. While Clapton did join Collins on stage at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1986, it feels almost comically out of place for his name to float around this track; Clapton’s bluesy finesse is not the driving force here, but Collins’ calculated minimalism is. The pared-down production—practically barren by ’80s pop standards—feels at home in bleak emotional landscapes, offering an almost voyeuristic intimacy that turns haunting to hypnotic. Chart-topping nostalgia aside, its lurking tension reads like a time capsule of personal devastation, impeccably preserved for us voyeurs to dissect. |
![]() 9 . Chester Thompson . Drum DuetFew moments in live music capture raw, percussive drama quite like the collaborations between Chester Thompson and Phil Collins. Their “Drum Duet” performances aren’t merely exhibitions of technical skill but high-stakes dialogues, where rhythm becomes the language. The version immortalized on Genesis’s “Seconds Out” album from the 1977 tour offers an incendiary display of mutual intuition. Context matters here—this was Thompson’s first time drumming with Genesis, subbing in after Bill Bruford’s short stint. Yet he slides into the sonic machinery as though born for it, locking into step with Collins so seamlessly it borders on eerie. The duet isn’t a clean-lined showpiece. It’s angular, even scrappy, with patterns that feel as much instinctive as rehearsed. Thompson attacks the kit with taut precision, while Collins leans into a looser, almost conversational spontaneity. Their interplay is both playful and predatory, driving the crowd into a frenzy without resorting to predictable crescendos. For Genesis—which critics sometimes dismissed as cerebral to a fault—the drum duet injected adrenaline into their live act. It’s more than a drum-off; it’s theater, where shifts in volume and tempo stack tension like a Hitchcock scene. That Thompson, a jazz-proficient newcomer, could carve out this moment with Collins—a figure often towering in both personality and sound—says plenty about his quiet confidence. Watching or listening now, what strikes you is the controlled chaos. Here are two drummers pushing each other, not in competition but in creative escalation. It’s jazz by way of progressive rock, precise but never sterile, loud yet never aimless. In an age when arenas demanded spectacle, Thompson and Collins answered with pounding skins, carved rhythms, and sweat-soaked daring. |
![]() 10 . Arnold Mcculler & Fred White . Easy Lover“Easy Lover” stands as a high-octane duet that defies genre conventions, stitching together rock and R&B with remarkable agility. Contrary to recent mix-ups attributing it to Arnold Mcculler and Fred White, the song owes its life to the powerhouse collaboration between Philip Bailey and Phil Collins, released in 1984 on Bailey’s *Chinese Wall* album. Collins’s drumming punctuates the track with thunderous precision, while Bailey’s crystalline falsetto soars alongside Collins’s grittier vocal grit, creating an exhilarating contrast. The unapologetically slick production—fueled by the era’s love for bombastic choruses—drives the track forward like a freight train, refusing to slow down for even a moment of introspection. Its chart performance, peaking at number two on both sides of the Atlantic, reflects its near-universal appeal, though its Gold certification hints at a lingering undercurrent of divisiveness among purists bristling at its polished sheen. Lyrically, it’s straightforward, poking fun at dangerous attractions with a wink that feels almost insincere, like a warning you’re too busy dancing to heed. The true hook, though, is its infectious guitar riff, which walks the line between showmanship and accessibility—a riff that embodies the ‘80s with perfect irony-free bravado. In retrospect, “Easy Lover” encapsulates a moment when excess wasn’t a flaw but a badge of honor, dressing melodrama in leather jackets and drum machines. |
![]() 11 . The Who . Fiddle About“Fiddle About” isn’t a track you hum to yourself while blissfully washing the dishes; it’s a dark jolt of storytelling that smacks you with discomfort and rawness. On “Tommy,” The Who’s ambitious rock opera, John Entwistle momentarily takes over songwriting duties from Pete Townshend to embody the grotesque caricature of Uncle Ernie, the predatory family member whose cheerful facade is a mask for his horrific deeds. The song’s jaunty, vaudevillian tone creates a nauseating dissonance with its sinister subject matter, making it all the more unsettling. Entwistle’s vocal performance is drenched in theatricality, veering into unsettling smiles that somehow out-creep its blunt lyrical content. Musically, the bouncy piano and flippant rhythm feel almost too cheery, a deliberate method to amplify the gruesome humor and moral tension. The decision to contrast levity with trauma wasn’t a throwaway quirk but a sharp narrative tool within “Tommy’s” layered storytelling. Entwistle’s contribution—including the equally disturbing “Cousin Kevin”—served as necessary pauses within the overarching narrative, grim reminders of the horrific trials young Tommy Walker endures on his bizarre journey. In the broader context of “Tommy,” which rocketed the band back into the spotlight with daring themes and sprawling ambition, this track underscores the operatic album’s willingness to probe deeply uncomfortable places within its characters’ lives. The song today exists as a divisive artifact—a snapshot of bold 1960s rock experimentation that doesn’t shy away from the grotesque but leaves listeners squirming in their seats. |
![]() 12 . Quincy Jones . The Phil Collins Big Band & The Los Endos Suite“The Los Endos Suite” is an ambitious reimagining of Genesis’s closing instrumental from *A Trick of the Tail*, funneled through the refined lens of jazz orchestration under the baton of Quincy Jones and Phil Collins. This isn’t just a cover; it’s a transformation, bending the jagged edges of progressive rock into shapely brass crescendos and rhythmic complexities. Originally crafted by the combined minds of Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Steve Hackett, and Mike Rutherford, the piece embraced the layered, almost cinematic textures Genesis excelled in during the ‘70s. In its big band incarnation, the track finds a new groove, with musicians like Gerald Albright on saxophone and Nathan East on bass providing sharp, virtuosic reinterpretations of the original themes. The live performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1996 injects the arrangement with swagger and a sense of occasion, casting the experimental DNA of Genesis into a stylish jazz suit without losing the intricate, intertwining melodies that defined the source material. What’s compelling here is the cross-genre marriage—progressive rock stripped of its theatrics finds an unlikely but fitting home amidst jazz solos and big band heft. The suite tracks the blend of familiarity and surprise, creating a dialogue between sonic nostalgia and innovation that manages to avoid lapsing into novelty. Released later on *A Hot Night in Paris*, the recorded effort makes the case for Genesis’s adaptability, with Jones and Collins proving that complex rock compositions can thrive—and even mutate—in the hands of adventurous arrangers. While some purists might sniff at the divergence from rock’s sacred text, the result uproots expectations, offering a reminder that great compositions, like cultural artifacts, evolve when stepped into new contexts. |
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