(Credits: Warner Music)
Sat 21 February 2026 15:30, UK
Given all of his accomplishments, Phil Collins doesn’t seem like the kind of artist who scared easily whenever he worked with other singers.
He was more than willing to give it a go with any musician that he felt could use some help, and even when he was embarrassing himself all the way through his Live Aid performance with Led Zeppelin, he was still willing to face the crowd with a smile on his face on every single song. But if there was someone who was totally in charge of their craft singing with him, Collins knew that he had to get his shit together a little more before he walked into the studio.
Granted, it’s not like everything came easy to Collins when he started making music, either. He spent years trying to make sure that every one of those Genesis albums sounded as perfect as possible, and while a lot of them did go in some strange directions, it was another matter for him trying to remember every single piece of the musical puzzle when he started to step out from behind the drum kit to sing.
But even when they started having hits, Collins never wanted to be the biggest star in the world when he started out. He only put out Face Value because the label thought it would be a good idea, and since all of those songs were based around how he felt about separating from his wife, Collins felt that he would be far better suited to release an album of more complex material like he played in Brand X.
Then again, when you write a song that becomes as big a hit as ‘In the Air Tonight’, the label is going to be making the decisions for you more than a few times. Collins clearly had what it took to be a pop star, but when he started to work outside of Genesis, he took it as an opportunity to help out any of his inspirations that he felt had fallen by the wayside. And it’s not like he didn’t understand what made other artists tick.
Joining the members of ABBA may have been a strange decision on the surface, but he did have that same sense of musical perfection when he started working on Eric Clapton’s solo material. He was there to remind people that his gods were still pumping out the best music of their career, but when it came time to sing next to R&B giants like The Four Tops, he did have second thoughts about working with the likes of Levi Stubbs.
He had already tried to worry about being an actor by this point, but in between working on material for Buster, having to show Stubbs a song like ‘Loco in Acapulco’ was a trip for him to endure, saying, “As it’s placed in the middle of the film, I refuse to sing ‘Loco in Acapulco’. I eventually ask the Four Tops, and produce them with Lamont [Dozier]. I have the unnerving job of singing the melody to Levi Stubbs, one of the most incredible voices of the 1960s.”
But it’s not like Collins was ever too sanitised for the R&B crowd or anything. Records like Face Value still have some of the greatest grooves of his career, and even when he was making some of the most pop-flavoured material in the late 1980s, he still had the same kind of fire in him when singing ‘Easy Lover’ with Philip Bailey that he did when he was pounding away on albums like The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
Not everyone expected Collins to have that kind of musical spirit in him, but his job was about being more than just a great musician. It was about listening to everything and internalising it, so when an opportunity presented itself like this, Collins was going to have no problem going from the most insane drum fills ever to making smooth R&B.