{"id":370163,"date":"2026-01-14T22:41:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T22:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/370163\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T22:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T22:41:09","slug":"the-one-singer-phil-collins-could-never-compete-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/370163\/","title":{"rendered":"The one singer Phil Collins could never compete with"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Phil<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still)<\/p>\n

Wed 14 January 2026 20:10, UK <\/p>\n

There\u2019s no chance that anyone could have found a way to come out spotless having the career Phil Collins<\/a> did. <\/p>\n

He might have been one of the greatest singers that pop music had ever had, but when looking at the prog beginnings that he had come from with Genesis, seeing him become the darling of MTV wasn\u2019t exactly going to endear him to the same audience that played the life out of Selling England by the Pound. Collins was clearly a much different artist, but he did have the wherewithal to realise when he was outmatched by a few of his contemporaries.<\/p>\n

Which probably comes as a surprise, given the amount of great musicians that he has taken the place of over the years. It takes a lot of confidence as a singer to think that you can take on anything by The Beatles or go out onstage with the remaining members of Led Zeppelin in place of John Bonham, but Collins always found a way to position himself alongside his favourite icons. It\u2019s not exactly what everyone expected, but Collins was prepared to live up to those daunting titles, too.<\/p>\n

Zeppelin\u2019s performance at Live Aid<\/a> was incredibly underwhelming most of the time, but it\u2019s hard to think of anyone else taking Bonzo\u2019s position at the time other than Collins. He was an absolute monster behind the kit, and since Jason Bonham wasn\u2019t yet old enough to step into his old man\u2019s shoes, why not get the same guy who had the massive sound of \u2018In the Air Tonight\u2019 on his side? <\/p>\n

But Collins was more than a simple singing drummer. He may have received the brunt of the blame for ruining Genesis, but the truth is that the band had been moving in that direction for a while. They had catchy songs long before Collins got behind the microphone on tunes like \u2018Counting Out Time\u2019, and even when Collins first made his vocal debut, A Trick of the Tail is far from a pop juggernaut by any stretch.<\/p>\n

In fact, Collins\u2019s trip as a pop star almost happened by accident. His solo career started because of an album of songs that the world wasn\u2019t supposed to hear, but when things started to pick up steam, it wasn\u2019t that hard for him to think that a song like \u2018That\u2019s All\u2019 or \u2018Invisible Touch\u2019 would work for his old mates. But right when they were reaching their commercial peak, Peter Gabriel was already getting his second wind as well.<\/p>\n

Gabriel never wanted to have any issues with his old bandmates, but when looking at the summer of 1986, both he and his old band were going head-to-head in the charts. And while Collins could do alright behind the microphone with and without his band, the kind of charisma that Gabriel had whenever he performed was never really going to be his wheelhouse whenever he performed.<\/p>\n

He could hold his own whenever he sang, but Collins felt that there was no sense of competition when he would get shown the door by his former lead singer, saying<\/a>, \u201cWe were never rivals.\u00a0I could never be the person he was when I started singing with Genesis. It was hard enough being the person I was.\u201d And when looking at them side by side, you can really see why Collins backed out.<\/p>\n

Neither of them were particularly great at stage banter or anything, but since Gabriel had years of working in lavish costumes, seeing him working with world musicians and fitting in was a lot different from what Collins could do. Both are great in their own right, but it\u2019s easy to see some of Collins\u2019s dance moves and see an above-average dad trying his best to look cool next to the real professionals. He was an animal behind the kit and could write beautiful tunes, but his skills as a frontman weren\u2019t necessarily the best.<\/p>\n

And given how Collins helped discover the drum sound that would define the 1980s with Gabriel, it\u2019s safe to say that it was all very friendly. Collins was the working man\u2019s pop singer in many senses of the word, but Gabriel was willing to take everything he learned in Genesis and take it that one step further. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still) Wed 14 January 2026 20:10, UK There\u2019s no chance that anyone could…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,44712,128,25298,10869,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-370163","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-genesis","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-peter-gabriel","12":"tag-phil-collins","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}