(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Tue 31 March 2026 16:30, UK
It can be a bit strange when looking at the legacy of Phil Collins.
On one hand, there are so many people who have grown up to his music and those who have seen him as one of the best drummers of his generation, but at the same time, no one who grew up in the 1980s really needs to hear a song like ‘Sussudio’ again for as long as they live. But even if Collins was a touch overexposed compared to some of his peers, it’s not like the pop charts ever got tired of him whenever he put out a new record.
While the tastemakers of the 1990s like Noel Gallagher may have hated everything he stood for, that didn’t stop Collins from having a major second act when working on the soundtrack to Tarzan. There are still countless kids who were able to sing along to ‘You’ll Be In My Heart’ when they were little, but even if Collins stopped making music after Testify, that didn’t mean that he was going to slow down as a musician.
He was more than happy to get back together with his old friends from Genesis to do a tour in the 2000s, but after one too many gigs behind the kit, Collins knew he needed to stop. There are only so many times someone can put their body through the wringer before calling it a day, and while Collins was always willing to give everything he had, he wasn’t going to sacrifice his well-being to make sure that everyone got to hear songs like ‘In the Air Tonight’ all over again. That didn’t mean he couldn’t work behind the scenes, though.
The Tarzan Broadway adaptation already had plenty of Collins originals thrown into the mix, and when looking at the modern pop landscape, he ended up influencing a lot more than you’d think. No one would have expected a guy who looked like your accountant to have an influence on hip-hop, but aside from performing with Bone Thugs-n-Harmony in the 1990s, the fact that Pharrell Williams thought that some of Collins’s records were too good to remix really showed everyone the calibre he was working with.
He had already learned a lot of his chops by listening to the greatest pop hits out of Motown back in the day, and it’s not like you couldn’t hear his influence on some of the younger pop stars of the 1980s as well. But while Collins was willing to mentor some of pop’s greatest voices, he remembered getting the shaft from Adele after spending a few months trying to work on material for her.
While Collins didn’t hold any hard feelings, he did end up feeling a little bit disappointed when he found out that none of the work that he put into Adele’s record made it onto the project, saying, “She got hold of me and asked if I would write with her. She gave me a piece of music to finish and at first I didn’t know if I’d failed the audition as I didn’t hear back from her. She said, ‘No, no, I’m moving house and the baby’s taking up a lot of my time, I’m not actually doing anything at the moment.’ And now I’ve heard there’s a [new album] coming out. I’m not on it, I know that.”
Granted, it’s not like anybody could write a song that fits Adele’s voice. Despite being fairly flexible in most ranges, Ms. Adkins has a very specific formula when it comes to a lot of her records, and while there are plenty of times where Collins threw in more complex chords here and there, Adele was always going to go with the song that best suited her voice rather than satisfy the rock and roll legends that had started working with.
It was never anything personal, but it also speaks to the changing dynamic of the music world at that point. Collins wasn’t out of style by any means, but if he wasn’t able to keep up with what the new kids needed, no one was going to sit around and wait to see if he could make something better when there were more people to work with.
