Phil Collins is one of the most successful artists, in any genre, of all time. The singer/songwriter/producer/drummer has had a pretty incredible career, and his influence is now being felt, somewhat surprisingly, in country music.
We say “surprisingly” because he started out playing drums in a progressive rock band in the early 1970s. And if you told the guy playing drums in this 1974 performance that, in fifty years, country artists would be singing his songs, he’d probably be surprised, too.
But it’s true: last year, country superstar Chris Stapleton covered Phil’s massive 1981 hit “In The Air Tonight” — with the help of Snoop Dogg — for ESPN’s Monday Night Football. More recently, Kane Brown sampled the song in his hit, “I Can Feel It.”
Of course, “In The Air Tonight” is an iconic song, and one that never seems to go away. But Collins is hardly a one-hit wonder. One of his other classics, “Take Me Home,” was recently covered by Little Big Town with Sugarland.
Collins has sold 100 million albums as a solo artist, and 150 million more as a member of the band Genesis. Collins has had a very long career in the arts. He was a child actor who was an extra in the Beatles’ 1964 feature film A Hard Day’s Night. In 1969, he formed a band called Flaming Youth, which broke up a year later. He joined Genesis in 1970; he’s not a founding member. They’d released two albums and gone through three drummers by then.
Collins was the band’s drummer and backing singer for five albums from 1970-1975, until their singer Peter Gabriel left the band. They auditioned a number of singers, with Collins helping the applicants through the auditions; the other band members soon realized that the drummer would be a great frontman. With Phil as the drummer and singer, they evolved from a progressive band to a more mainstream rock band to a pop behemoth (but it’s worth mentioning that every album had lengthy songs that harkened back to their progressive roots).
In 1981, Colllins released his solo debut, Face Value, which contained “In The Air Tonight.” For the next decade, he switched back and forth between massive success as a solo artist and with Genesis. If that wasn’t enough, he also collaborated with other artists; sometimes as a producer, sometimes as a duet partner, sometimes as a session drummer. He worked with former Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant, former ABBA singer Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Earth Wind and Fire singer Phillip Bailey, Howard Jones, Adam Ant, and Eric Clapton, to name a few.
In 1996, Collins announced that he was leaving Genesis. After that, he dedicated himself to his solo career, and a new project: leader of a big band (as a drummer). He also hit a new commercial peak when Disney hired him to provide music for the 1999 animated film Tarzan; “You’ll Be In My Heart,” from the film, won an Oscar.
Collins struggled with various health issues in the 2010s and can no longer play drums or piano. But in 2017, he staged a massively successful comeback tour, with his son Nic Collins on drums. In 2021, Genesis kicked off their own massively successful comeback tour as well, again with Nic on drums. The tour ended in March of 2022, with what might be Phil Collins’ final performance.
Whether or not he ever records or performs another note, Collins’ legacy is set in stone. Even if critics and hipsters didn’t love him, millions of fans do (including R&B and hip-hop artists, who paid tribute to the man on the 2001 Phil tribute album, Urban Renewal). At his peak, he was one of the best drummers in the world. And as a singer/songwriter, his work has certainly passed the test of time. Here are some other ones that we’d love to see other country singers — or any other singers, really — cover.
