(Credits: Far Out / Warner Music)
Tue 11 November 2025 7:07, UK
Phil Collins has been responsible for selling over 250 million records between Genesis and his solo career. However, despite his success that spanned decades, there is one song that weighs the heaviest on his shoulders.
By no stretch of the imagination could Collins be considered a one-hit wonder under any definition. Yet, a song such as ‘In The Air Tonight’ is bigger than merely being part of his back catalogue, and is a piece of music that goes beyond language.
With these rare songs that reach such uncharted levels of popularity, it stops being under the ownership of the artist who crafted it. Instead, it belongs to the people.
The track was the first single that Collins released as a solo artist in 1981, and he didn’t even expect it to become a hit. While he had experienced huge success as the frontman of Genesis after stepping up to save their career in 1975, this was different.
His solo career was somewhat accidental, as Genesis took a break following a lengthy world tour, and personal circumstances led him to turn to songwriting to deal with the pain.
Despite the success of Face Value, the lead single ‘In The Air Tonight’ remains a painful reminder of a dark period in Collins’ life after the heartbreaking break-up of his first marriage. When he wrote the track, his mind was in a lonely place, and the artist used music as a form of therapy. Unexpectedly, it became the biggest hit of his career and continues to follow him everywhere he goes.
Speaking of the track to Rolling Stone, Collins said: “This song has become a stone around my neck, though I do love it. I wrote it after my wife left me. Genesis had done a tour that was far too long. She said to me, ‘We won’t be together if you do the next tour.’ I said, ‘I’m a musician. I have to go away and play. Just hold your breath when I’m over there.’ Then Genesis toured Japan. When I got back, she said she was leaving and taking the kids.”
The birth of the song came naturally in the studio one day, and just flowed out of him without Collins needing to overthink. He shared, One day I was working on a piece in D-minor, the saddest [key] of all. I just wrote a sequence, and it sounded nice. I wrote the lyrics spontaneously. I’m not quite sure what the song is about, but there’s a lot of anger, a lot of despair and a lot of frustration.”
As much as the song was written during his divorce, it’s not really about that, and Collins even confessed, “Nobody knows what the song is about, and I kind of like the mystery.”
He also stressed, “I’m not complaining” about the wild life that ‘In The Air Tonight’ has lived, noting, “It paid for this house we’re in right now!”
While Collins views the song as “a stone around my neck”, he’s also gracious about the riches it has given him, and that most songwriters would lose a limb to have ‘In The Air Tonight’ in their arsenal. It’s a song that will continue to be remembered for generations to come, and for that, he will always be grateful.
Undeniably, ‘In The Air Tonight’ was the perfect way to launch Collins as a solo artist, too. The success of the creation gifted him with a platform to express his songwriting in a way that didn’t quite fit in with the framework of Genesis, and made Face Value an international chart-topper. Although it might be a stone around his neck, the stone is made out of 24-carat gold.
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