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Phil Collins VibeZ

Fifteen tracks from a drummer who became one of the most successful and most mocked pop stars of the 1980s. The mockery has aged worse than the records.

Phil Collins, reconsidered

Phil Collins was a session and progressive-rock drummer — he joined Genesis in 1970 and took over as singer when Peter Gabriel left — and he is, by any technical measure, one of the finest drummers of his generation. Brian Eno and Robert Fripp both used him; his playing on Brian Eno's Another Green World is remarkable.

His solo career made him ubiquitous enough to provoke a backlash that lasted decades. What that backlash tended to miss is how much soul music is in these records: Collins was a serious Motown obsessive, and the horn arrangements on his 1980s albums were played by the Phenix Horns — Earth, Wind & Fire's section.

The reassessment has been thorough, driven partly by hip-hop producers who noticed the drum sounds and partly by a generation with no stake in the original argument.

What to listen for

"In the Air Tonight" is the record, and the drum entrance at three minutes and forty seconds is one of the most famous moments in pop. The sound came from a studio accident — a reverse-talkback microphone with heavy compression, discovered while working on a Peter Gabriel session — and it became known as gated reverb, defining the decade's drum sound.

"Easy Lover" with Philip Bailey is the Earth, Wind & Fire connection made explicit and is a genuinely great pop-funk record.

"You Can't Hurry Love" is the Supremes song, played almost as a fan letter to Motown, and "Two Hearts" was co-written with Lamont Dozier of Holland–Dozier–Holland, which is about as direct a soul credential as exists.

"Against All Odds" and "One More Night" are the ballads, and "Sussudio" is the one that gets mocked hardest and is, underneath, a Prince pastiche with a serious horn arrangement.

"Another Day in Paradise" is the political one, and "If Leaving Me Is Easy" and "Why Can't It Wait 'Til Morning" are the deep cuts worth finding.

Go deeper

Face Value (1981) is the album — made in the aftermath of his divorce, and considerably rawer than his later reputation suggests.

Genesis's Selling England by the Pound is where to hear him drumming at full technical stretch, and Brand X — his jazz-fusion side project — is the real revelation.

And the sampling trail is worth following: 2Pac, Kanye West, Lil' Kim and dozens of others have built records on his catalogue.

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