francois@yale.ARPA (Charles B. Francois) (10/31/85)
> But I'm not totally knocking Phil Collins...he is probably the most > prolific pop music generator around today ("In The Air Tonight" is in > my opinion one of his best songs...why can't he do more like them?) It's a shame, isn't it, what success can do to you. It seems to me when Phil first branched out solo, he picked for himself a "short, angry man" image that suited wonderfully his angst-filled, downbeat tirades (e.g. "In the Air Tonight" and "I Don't Care Anymore"). That bent also affected his writing work for Genesis, albeit with a more melancholy tinge that resulted in such good, honest songs as "Misunderstanding", "Man on the Corner", and one of my favorite songs of recent years, "That's All". His second solo album generally maintained the same intensity, but his big hit singles during and after that period are probably responsible for the course his career took subsequently: two up-tempo dance tunes -- his lick-for-lick copy of "You Can't Hurry Love" and the "Easy Lover" duet with Philip Bailey -- and one mushy, though not awful, romantic ballad, "Against All Odds". The current album is a perfect illustration of the "sticking-to-a-good- thing" approach to music-making. "One More Night" is simply whiny schlock, "Sussudio" is an embarrassment -- though apparently less so than the version that was originally released in Great Britain which sounded, if you can believe it, even more like "1999" (thus preceding Kim Carnes' "Crazy in the Night" and Ready for the World's "Oh Sheila" on the "1999" rip-offs bandwagon) -- and the only part of "Don't Lose My Swiss Bank Account Number" worth listening to is the first 10 seconds or so, just long enough to hear the syncopated beat. Along with the new washed-out, "white Lionel Ritchie" sound, Phil also picked a new image: still short but now there's the long hair, winsome grins, nods and winks, all traits of the "Cabbage Patch Kid" of pop. And the ultimate irony, as has been pointed out, is that the cover portrait on "No Jacket Required" is of the old lean (well...), mean Phil, not the oozer of pap recorded therein. There are those who insist that Phil Collins's only contribution to popular music will be "In the Air Tonight"'s influence on the current market taste for very prominently mixed drums and bass beats, in EVERY song. Oh well, he WAS once a drummer after all... --Charles B. Francois {...,decvax}!yale!francois