February 13, 1981 - Phil Collins and In The Air Tonight

The following day after my last release Phil Collins of Genesis released his first solo album "Face Value" on February 13, 1981. I have only the first song on this album, titled "In The Air Tonight", but it was a hugely successful single. Collins was taking a break from working with Genesis and recorded his first solo album. Just as in Genesis Phil performs lead vocals as well as drums and percussion. He's joined on this song by Daryl Stuermer on guitar, John Giblin on bass and it's actually Collins who plays the synths on this song as well. 

The song starts with a slow drum beat that sounds pretty good and we hear some droning guitar and light synths in the background. Phil starts his singing in the chorus and he sounds pretty good as he sings in a high voice overtop of his synths and drums. He really likes to say "oh lord" after every line and after another droning guitar strum things move into the first verse. Collins vocals sound pretty solid in the verse as well and I really like his delivery at the end of his lyrics especially the bite behind "it's all been a pack of lies!" They play another simple, but catchy chorus and afterwards we hear another nice line when Phil sings "well I remember" as he does a great job with the emphasis. This leads into another quiet, but solid verse and after we hear Phil sing "some stranger to you and me" he plays a really epic drumroll that leads into another chorus. Collins continues his more hard-hitting drumbeat for the the rest of the song and he plays a few more pretty sweet drum fills as they jam out the chorus several times. Phil does some great yelling vocals in these final choruses as well as they begin a slow fade. Lots of cool drums and some solid yells at the end as this huge hit finally fades to an end. This will be my only song by Phil Collins solo, but as I like to say with these one-offs, this was surely another doozy and a pretty cool song.

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