WCSX Classic Cuts : Misunderstanding
WCSX Classic Cuts
Genesis: “Misunderstanding”
The Hook: Marriage woes motivated Phil Collins to write his first song for Genesis to record.
Album: Duke
Year: 1980
Writer: Phil Collins
Stats: Peaked at number-14 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Background: Despite having been in Genesis for a decade, up until their Duke album in 1980, Phil Collins hadn’t written any songs for the band. Keyboardist Tony Banks recalls how — and why — that changed.
Genesis keyboardist Tony Banks on how the song “Misunderstanding” marked the emergence of Phil Collins as a songwriter. OC:…was misunderstanding. :23
“’Misunderstanding’ was the first song we recorded that Phil wrote. Phil didn’t used to write all that much of Genesis’ material in the early days, up to and including Duke, really. He just didn’t rate himself as a writer that much, I don’t think, and he’d never really tried it before. But after his problems with his marriage in that year, he started to write songs. And he played us a load of the songs he’d written and we picked out of them two songs. One of them was ‘Misunderstanding.’”
