(Credits: Warner Music)
Mon 15 December 2025 19:00, UK
The art behind any Phil Collins song doesn’t always have to come back to the drums.
There’s no doubt that the guy was an absolute monster behind the kit if you go back to any of those old Genesis records, but there’s a lot more to him as a songwriter than the sentimental side of his music. But even if there was a lot of weapons-grade cheese in a lot of his back catalogue, the reason why people keep coming back is that those melodies move something in their hearts every time they come on.
That’s not to say that Collins necessarily has to be the most in-depth writer in the world. No one who writes a song like ‘Sussudio’ really demands to be taken seriously every single time they make a tune, but when he does go for the throat, a song like ‘Against All Odds’ would have still been among the greatest songs of its time even if you ignored all of the 1980s production surrounding it.
Because before anything else, Collins always took his cues from the greatest songwriters that he had ever heard. No one was going to expect him to rewrite Dylan by any stretch, but when you listen to a lot of his musical instincts, he clearly had a fair amount of education listening to those old Beatles records and tried his best to create that same kind of feeling whenever he started writing his own introspective masterpieces on albums like Face Value.
And it’s not like he didn’t have some experience to draw on, either. Regardless of how many musical chops he had, a lot of his first solo record came from him taking the building blocks of music and trying to figure out his crumbling marriage at the same time. Not everyone needs to be necessarily pushed the same way that he was, but Collins always knew he at least had a friend when listening to Bonnie Raitt.
Raitt had been established well after Collins’s glory years, but he had nothing on the way that she could sing. Sure, she had her bluesy side, but there was a side to her that felt like the perfect middle ground between the blues belter and the kind of tenderhearted rock and roll star. And when both personas came together on a song like ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’, Collins just about went to pieces.
Countless artists have gone through heartache in their lives, but Collins felt that no one captured that feeling quite like she did when she sang that song, saying, “I thought the lyrics of that song were just the best. If you’re going through something, that’s the perfect way of putting it. Other people have done it, but I haven’t heard anybody do it like she does.”
Then again, a lot of what Raitt does is something that’s in your guts before anyone even starts singing. Anyone could have tried to make the best record they could ad spend all the hours they have to make sure each take sounds perfect, but whenever she sings, there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that she knows that kind of pain firsthand and is bearing her soul however she can so that anyone could feel an ounce of what she went through.
But that’s what good songwriting is all about at the end of the day. Most people can try their hardest to make a tune that’s technically perfect, but the best songs aren’t always the ones that are pristine productions. They’re the ones that make people feel emotions that they may have thought were gone forever.
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