(Credits: Warner Music)
Fri 28 November 2025 15:00, UK
If you’re trying to go up against The Beatles at any point in your career, allow me to offer one word of advice. DON’T.
There are plenty of ways for artists to become one of the biggest bands in the world, but when you start trying to get into a competition with one of the most decorated bands in history, you’re setting yourself up for failure in a way. But that didn’t stop Phil Collins from thinking that he had an ace in the hole when he started making some of his hits back in the day.
To his credit, though, the mania that surrounded Collins when he first started working on his solo career was at least on par with what the Fab Four did. He was nowhere near their level of songcrafting by any means, but when he started showing up everywhere and became as omnipresent as The Beatles on the radio, most would have sworn that every pop station in the world simply couldn’t get enough of the guy.
But it’s not like Collins was ever trying to be in competition with the four-headed monster whenever he played. He knew what that kind of craze was like firsthand when he first saw the group in A Hard Day’s Night, so having an above-average number of hits in his arsenal was nothing compared to the sheer excellence on nearly every single track that his favourite band put out.
When he reached the 1990s, though, Collins entered an era that didn’t really suit him that much. He did end up with a few hits that decade and made one of the greatest Disney soundtracks of all time, but before he started delving into children’s entertainment, Dance into the Light did help give him a boost in an era when he was considered terminally uncool thanks to the Gallagher brothers.
That record was already a departure for Collins because of him writing with a guitar player in mind, but ‘It’s In Your Eyes’ already has that Beatles whimsy sprinkled on top of it from the moment it started. If his covers of Motown artists didn’t make it clear, Collins was never afraid to wear his inspirations on his sleeve, but he felt that even in the era when the remaining three Fabs got back together, he was well above what they had done for The Beatles Anthology on his own.
Compared to the massive singles that the Fabs released at the time, Collins felt like he outdid The Beatles at their own game with tunes like ‘It’s In Your Eyes’, saying, “‘It’s In Your Eyes’ and ‘That’s What You Said’ are both Beatles, really. In fact, when I sent my demos in to my keyboard player, Brad Cole, he said, ‘This is what ‘Free As A Bird’ should have sounded like!’ Because it is more Beatle than the actual Beatle reunion thing.” But that only comes down to perspective half the time.
‘Free As A Bird’ doesn’t have any of the same Beatles trademarks that Collins used for his song, but that’s not what it was supposed to be. With the ingenuity involved from Jeff Lynne, their reunion singles were a great snapshot of what the band could have made had they been able to see the 1990s, whereas Collins was more in line with the tribute-style songs like George Harrison’s ‘When We Was Fab’.
That’s not to say that one version is better than the other by any stretch, but each of them is doing totally different things. Collins was trying to remind everyone of the kind of musical excitement that The Beatles gave everyone back in the day, but anyone really paying attention to ‘Free As A Bird’ will see more of the subtleties of what made those Liverpool lads so magical together.
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