Illustration by Arthur Rackham of the ballad The Twa Corbies

A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of the British Isles from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many ballads were written and sold as single sheet broadsides. The form was often used by poets and composers from the 18th century onwards to produce lyrical ballads. In the later 19th century it took on the meaning of a slow form of popular love song and the term is now often used as synonymous with any love song, particularly the pop or rock power ballad.

Origins[link]

The ballad probably derives its name from medieval French dance songs or "ballares" (from which we also get ballet), as did the alternative rival form that became the French Ballade. In theme and function they may originate from Scandinavian and Germanic traditions of storytelling that can be seen in poems such as Beowulf.^[1] The earliest example we have of a recognisable ballad in form in England is ‘Judas’ in a 13th-century manuscript.^[2]

Ballad form[link]

Most northern and west European ballads are written in ballad stanzas or quatrains (four-line stanzas) of alternating lines of iambic (an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable) tetrameter (eight syllables) and iambic trimeter (six syllables), known as ballad meter. Usually, only the second and fourth line of a quatrain are rhymed (in the scheme a, b, c, b), which has been taken to suggest that, originally, ballads consisted of couplets (two lines) of rhymed verse, each of 14 syllables.^[3] As can be seen in this stanza from ‘Lord Thomas and Fair Annet’:

The horse| fair Ann|et rode| upon|
He amb|led like| the wind|,
With sil|ver he| was shod| before,
With burn|ing gold| behind|.^[1]

However, there is considerable variation on this pattern in almost every respect, including length, number of lines and rhyming scheme, making the strict definition of a ballad extremely difficult. In southern and eastern Europe, and in countries that derive their tradition from them, ballad structure differs significantly, like Spanish romanceros, which are octosyllabic and use consonance rather than rhyme.^[4]

In all traditions most ballads are narrative in nature, with a self-contained story, often concise and relying on imagery, rather than description, which can be tragic, historical, romantic or comic.^[3] Another common feature of ballads is repetition, sometimes of fourth lines in succeeding stanzas, as a refrain, sometimes of third and fourth lines of a stanza and sometimes of entire stanzas.^[1]

Composition[link]

Scholars of ballads are often divided into two camps, the ‘communalists’ who, following the line established by the German scholar Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) and the Brothers Grimm, argue that ballads arose by a combined communal effort and did not have a single author, and ‘individualists’, following the thinking of English collector Cecil Sharp, who assert that there was a single original author.^[2] The communalist position tends to lead to the view that more recent, particularly printed broadside ballads, where we may even know the author, are a debased form of the genre. The individualists position has tended to lead to the view that later changes in the words of ballads are corruptions of an original text.^[5] More recently scholars have pointed to the interchange of oral and written forms of the ballad.^[6]

Classification[link]

Illustration by Arthur Rackham to Young Bekie.

European Ballads have been generally classified into three major groups: traditional, broadside and literary. In America a distinction is drawn between ballads that are versions of European, particularly British and Irish songs, and 'native American ballads', developed without reference to earlier songs. A further development was the evolution of the blues ballad, which mixed the genre with Afro-American music. For the late 19th century the music publishing industry found a market for what are often termed sentimental ballads, and these are the origin of the modern use of the term ballad to mean a slow love song.

Traditional ballads[link]

The traditional, classical or popular (meaning of the people) ballad has been seen as originating with the wandering minstrels of late medieval Europe.^[1] From the end of the 15th century we have printed ballads that suggest a rich tradition of popular music. We know from a reference in William Langland's Piers Plowman, that ballads about Robin Hood were being sung from at least the late 14th century and the oldest detailed material we have is Wynkyn de Worde's collection of Robin Hood ballads printed about 1495.^[7]

Early collections of English ballads were made by Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) and in the Roxburghe Ballads collected by Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer (1661–1724).^[7] In the 18th century there were increasing numbers of such collections, including Thomas D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth: or, Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719–20) and Bishop Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765).^[7] The last of these also contained some oral material and by the end of the 18th century this was becoming increasingly common, with collections including John Ritson's, The Bishopric Garland (1784), which paralleled the work of figures like Robert Burns and Walter Scott in Scotland.^[7]

Key work on the traditional ballad was undertaken in the late 19th century in Denmark by Svend Grundtvig and for England and Scotland by the Harvard professor Francis James Child.^[2] They attempted to record and classify all the known ballads and variants in their chosen regions. Since Child died before writing a commentary on his work it is uncertain exactly how and why he differentiated the 305 ballads printed that would be published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads.^[8] There have been many different and contradictory attempts to classify traditional ballads by theme, but commonly identified types are the religious, supernatural, tragic, love ballads, historic, legendary and humorous.^[1]

Broadsides[link]

An 18th-century broadside ballad: The tragical ballad: or, the lady who fell in love with her serving-man.

Broadside ballads (also known as 'roadsheet’, ‘stall’, ‘vulgar’ or ‘come all ye’ ballads) were a product of the development of cheap print in the 16th century. They were generally printed on one side of a medium to large sheet of poor quality paper. In their heyday of the first half of the 17th century, they were printed in black-letter or gothic type and included multiple, eye-catching illustrations, a popular tune tile, as well as an alluring poem.^[9] By the 18th century, they were printed in white letter or roman type and often without much decoration (as well as tune title). These later sheets could include many individual songs, which would be cut apart and sold individually as "slipsongs." Alternatively, they might be folded to make small cheap books or "chapbooks" which often drew on ballad stories.^[10] They were produced in huge numbers, with over 400,000 being sold in England annually by the 1660s.^[11] Tessa Watt estimates the number of copies sold may have been in the millions.^[12] Many were sold by travelling chapmen in city streets or at fairs.^[13] The subject matter varied from what has been defined as the traditional ballad, although many traditional ballads were printed as broadsides. Among the topics were love, religion, drinking-songs, legends, and early journalism, which included disasters, political events and signs, wonders and prodigies.^[14]

Literary ballads[link]

Literary or lyrical ballads grew out of an increasing interest in the ballad form among social elites and intellectuals, particularly in the Romantic movement from the later 18th century. Respected literary figures like Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott in Scotland both collected and wrote their own ballads, using the form to create an artistic product. Similarly in England William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge produced a collection of Lyrical Ballads in 1798, including Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. At the same time in Germany Goethe cooperated with Schiller on a series of ballads, some of which were later set to music by Schubert.^[15] Later important examples of the poetic form included Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Barrack Room Ballads’ (1892-6) and Oscar Wilde’s ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol’ (1897).^[16]

Ballad operas[link]

Painting based on The Beggar's Opera, Act III Scene 2, William Hogarth, c. 1728

In the 18th century ballad operas developed as a form of English stage entertainment, partly in opposition to the Italian domination of the London operatic scene.^[17] It consisted of racy and often satirical spoken (English) dialogue, interspersed with songs that are deliberately kept very short to minimize disruptions to the flow of the story. Subject matter involved the lower, often criminal, orders, and typically showed a suspension (or inversion) of the high moral values of the Italian opera of the period. The first, most important and successful was The Beggar's Opera of 1728, with a libretto by John Gay and music arranged by John Christopher Pepusch, both of whom probably influenced by Parisian vaudeville and the burlesques and musical plays of Thomas D'Urfey (1653–1723), a number of whose collected ballads they used in their work.^[18] Gay produced further works in this style, including a sequel under the title Polly. Henry Fielding, Colley Cibber, Arne, Dibdin, Arnold, Shield, Jackson of Exeter, Hook and many others produced ballad operas that enjoyed great popularity.^[19] Ballad opera was attempted in America and Prussia. Later it moved into a more pastoral form, like Isaac Bickerstaffe's Love in a Village (1763) and Shield’s Rosina (1781), using more original music that imitated, rather than reproduced, existing ballads. Although the form declined in popularity towards the end of the 18th century its influence can be seen in light operas like that of Gilbert and Sullivan's early works like The Sorcerer.^[20] In the 20th century, one of the most influential plays, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's (1928) The Threepenny Opera was a reworking of The Beggar's Opera, setting a similar story with the same characters, and containing much of the same satirical bite, but only using one tune from the original.^[21] The term ballad opera has also been used to describe musicals using folk music, such as The Martins and the Coys in 1944, and Peter Bellamy's The Transports in 1977.^[22] The satiric elements of ballad opera can be seen in some modern musicals such as Chicago and Cabaret.^[23]

Beyond Europe[link]

Native American ballads[link]

Statue of John Henry outside the town of Talcott in Summers County, West Virginia

Native American ballads are ballads that are native to North America (not to be confused with ballads performed by native Americans).^[24] Some 300 ballads sung in North America have been identified as having origins in British traditional or broadside ballads.^[24] Examples include ‘The Streets of Laredo’, which was found in Britain and Ireland as ‘The Unfortunate Rake’; however, a further 400 have been identified as originating in North America, including among the best known, ‘The Ballad of Davy Crockett' and 'Jesse James'.^[24] They became an increasing area of interest for scholars in the 19th century and most were recorded or catalogued by George Malcolm Laws, although some have since been found to have British origins and additional songs have since been collected.^[24] They are usually considered closest in form to British broadside ballads and in terms of style are largely indistinguishable, however, they demonstrate a particular concern with occupations, journalistic style and often lack the ribaldry of British broadside ballads.^[6]

Blues ballads[link]

The blues ballad has been seen as a fusion of Anglo-American and Afro-American styles of music from the 19th century. Blues ballads tend to deal with active protagonists, often anti-heroes, resisting adversity and authority, but frequently lacking a strong narrative and emphasising character instead.^[24] They were often accompanied by banjo and guitar which followed the blues musical format.^[6] The most famous blues ballads include those about John Henry and Casey Jones.^[24]

Bush ballads[link]

Cover to Banjo Paterson's seminal 1905 collection of bush ballads, entitled The Old Bush Songs

The ballad was taken to Australia by early settlers from Britain and Ireland and gained particular foothold in the rural outback. The rhyming songs, poems and tales written in the form of ballads often relate to the itinerant and rebellious spirit of Australia in The Bush, and the authors and performers are often referred to as bush bards.^[25] The 19th century was the golden age of bush ballads. Several collectors have catalogued the songs including John Meredith whose recording in the 1950s became the basis of the collection in the National Library of Australia.^[25] The songs tell personal stories of life in the wide open country of Australia. Typical subjects include mining, raising and droving cattle, sheep shearing, wanderings, war stories, the 1891 Australian shearers' strike, class conflicts between the landless working class and the squatters (landowners), and outlaws such as Ned Kelly, as well as love interests and more modern fare such as trucking.^[26] The most famous bush ballad is "Waltzing Matilda", which has been called "the unofficial national anthem of Australia".^[27]

Sentimental ballads[link]

Now the most commonly understood meaning of the term ballad, sentimental ballads, sometimes called "tear-jerkers" or "drawing-room ballads" owing to their popularity with the middle classes, had their origins in the early ‘Tin Pan Alley’ music industry of the later 19th century. They were generally sentimental, narrative, strophic songs published separately or as part of an opera (descendants perhaps of broadside ballads, but with printed music, and usually newly composed. Such songs include "Little Rosewood Casket" (1870), "After the Ball" (1892) and "Danny Boy".^[24] By the Victorian era, ballad had come to mean any sentimental popular song, especially so-called "royalty ballads", which publishers would pay popular singers to perform in Britain and the United States in "ballad concerts." Some of Stephen Foster's songs exemplify this genre.^[28] By the 1920s, composers of Tin Pan Alley and Broadway used ballad to signify a slow, sentimental tune or love song, often written in a fairly standardized form (see below). Jazz musicians sometimes broaden the term still further to embrace all slow-tempo pieces.^[29]

Jazz, blues and traditional pop[link]

As new genres of music, such as ragtime, blues and jazz, began to emerge in the early 20th century the popularity of the genre faded, but the association with sentimentality led to the term ballad being used for a slow love song from the 1950s onwards.^[24] Most pop standard and jazz ballads are built from a single, introductory verse; usually around 16 bars in length, and ending on the dominant; the chorus or refrain, usually it is 16 or 32 bars long, and in AABA form (though other forms such as ABAC are not uncommon). In AABA forms, the B section is usually referred to as the bridge; often a brief coda, sometimes based on material from the bridge, was added as in "Over the Rainbow".^[30] Other key traditional pop and jazz ballads include: "Body and Soul" by Johnny Green; "Misty" by Erroll Garner; "The Man I Love" by George Gershwin; "My Funny Valentine" by Rodgers and Hart, "God Bless the Child" by Billie Holiday, "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" by Cole Porter, the instrumental ballad "Naima" by John Coltrane, "In a Sentimental Mood" by Duke Ellington and "Always" by Irving Berlin.^[31]

Pop and rock ballads[link]

To emphasize the emotional aspect of a power ballad, crowds customarily hold up lit lighters.^[32][33]

The most common use of the term ballad in modern pop music is for an emotional love song.^[34] When the word ballad appears in the title of a song, as for example in The Beatles's "The Ballad of John and Yoko" or Billy Joel's "The Ballad of Billy the Kid", the folk-music sense is generally implied. Ballad is also sometimes applied to strophic story-songs more generally, such as Don McLean's "American Pie".^[35]

Power ballads[link]

Simon Frith identifies the origins of the power ballad in the emotional singing of soul artists, particularly Ray Charles and the adaptation of this style by figures such as Eric Burdon, Tom Jones and Joe Cocker to produce slow tempo songs often building to a loud and emotive chorus backed by drums, electric guitars and sometimes choirs.^[36] According to Charles Aaron, power ballads came into existence in the early 1970s, when rock stars attempted to convey profound messages to audiences.^[37] He argues that the power ballad broke into the mainstream of American consciousness in 1976 as FM radio gave a new lease of life to earlier songs like Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" (1971), Aerosmith's "Dream On" (1973), and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" (1974).^[37] Other notable examples include Nazareth's version of "Love Hurts" (1975), Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is"^[36] and Scorpions "Still Loving You" (both 1984), Heart's "What About Love" (1985),^[38] and Whitesnake's "Is This Love" (1987).^[39]

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ballads

• Border ballads
• Corrido — a form of ballad originating in northern Mexico and the U.S. Southwest
• Graves, Alfred Perceval
• List of the Child Ballads
• List of folk song collections
• List of Irish ballads
• List of rock ballads
• Murder ballad
• Roud Folk Song Index
• Song structure (popular music)
• Torch song

Notes[link]

References and further reading[link]

• Middleton, Richard. "Popular Music (I)". Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (subscription required). Accessed 2007-04-06.
• Randel, Don (1986). The New Harvard Dictionary of Music. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-61525-5.
• Temperley, Nicholas. "Ballad (II, 2)". Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (subscription required). Accessed 2007-04-06.
• Witmer, Robert. "Ballad (jazz)". Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (subscription required). Accessed 2007-04-06.
• Marcello Sorce Keller, "Sul castel di mirabel: Life of a Ballad in Oral Tradition and Choral Practice", Ethnomusicology, XXX(1986), no. 3, 449- 469.

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (May 2011)

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Ballads

• The Ballad Society of Japan
• The British Literary Ballads Archive
• The Bodleian Library Ballad Collection: view facsimiles of printed ballads
• The English Broadside Ballad Archive: searchable database of ballad images, citations, and recordings
• Welsh Ballads Website
• The Traditional Ballad Index
• Black-letter Broadside Ballads Of The years 1595-1639 From the Collection of Samuel Pepys
• Smithsonian Global Sound: The Music of Poetry — audio samples of poems, hymns and songs in ballad meter.
• The Oxford Book of Ballads, complete 1910 book by Arthur Quiller-Couch
• Great Rock Ballads
• Jazz and Vocal Ballads
• English Broadside Ballad Archive -- an archive of images and recordings of over 4,000 pre-1700 broadside ballads

Phil Collins
Phil Collins performing in Perugia, Italy, 1996
Background information
Birth name	Philip David Charles Collins
Born	(1951-01-30) 30 January 1951 (age 61) Chiswick, Middlesex, England, United Kingdom
Genres	Progressive rock, rock, pop, pop rock, soft rock, jazz fusion, R&B, big band
Occupations	Singer-songwriter, musician, actor
Instruments	Vocals, drums, percussion, guitar, piano, keyboards
Years active	1968–2011
Labels	Virgin, Atlantic
Associated acts	Genesis, Brand X, Flaming Youth, Philip Bailey, Eric Clapton, the Phil Collins Big Band, Frida Lyngstad, Brian Eno
Website	philcollins.co.uk

Philip David Charles "Phil" Collins, LVO (born 30 January 1951)^[1] is an English singer-songwriter, drummer, pianist and actor best known as a drummer and vocalist for British progressive rock group Genesis and as a solo artist.

Collins sang the lead vocals on several chart hits in the United Kingdom and the United States between 1975 and 2010, either as a solo artist or with Genesis. His singles, sometimes dealing with lost love, ranged from the drum-heavy "In the Air Tonight", dance pop of "Sussudio", piano-driven "Against All Odds", to the political statements of "Another Day in Paradise".

Collins's professional music career began as a drummer, originally in a band called The Real Thing with Andrea Bertorelli, who later became his first wife. Collins played drums and shared lead vocals (with Brian Chatton) in Flaming Youth which recorded one album, (Ark II). In 1970, he took over drums for Genesis, which had already recorded two albums. In Genesis, Collins originally supplied backing vocals for front man Peter Gabriel, singing lead on only two songs: "For Absent Friends" from 1971's Nursery Cryme album and "More Fool Me" from Selling England by the Pound, which was released in 1973. Following Gabriel's departure in 1975, Collins became the group's lead singer.

His solo career, heavily influenced by his personal life, brought both himself and Genesis commercial success. According to Atlantic Records, Collins's total worldwide sales as a solo artist, as of 2000, were 150 million.^[2] Collins has won numerous music awards throughout his career, including seven Grammy Awards, five Brit Awards—winning Best British Male three times, an Academy Award, and two Golden Globes for his solo work.^[3][4] He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis in 2010.

Collins is one of only three recording artists (along with Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson) who have sold over 100 million albums worldwide both as solo artists and (separately) as principal members of a band.^[5] When his work with Genesis, his work with other artists, as well as his solo career is totalled, Collins had more top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart during the 1980s than any other artist.^[6] In 2008, Collins was ranked the 22nd most successful artist on the "The Billboard Hot 100 Top All-Time Artists".^[7]

Early life[link]

Collins was born in Chiswick, London, the son of Winifred M. "June" (née Strange), a theatrical agent, and Greville Philip Austin Collins, an insurance agent.^[8][9] He was given a toy drum kit for Christmas when he was five. Later, his uncle made him a makeshift one that he used regularly. As Collins grew older these were followed by more complete sets bought by his parents.^[10] He practiced by playing alongside the television and radio, and never learned to read and write conventional musical notation; instead, he uses a system he devised himself.^[11]

Early career[link]

His professional training began at 14 when he entered Barbara Speake Stage School.^[12] He began a career as a child actor and model, and won his first major role as the Artful Dodger in the London production of Oliver!. He was an extra in the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night, one of hundreds of screaming teenagers during the TV concert sequence and seen fleetingly in a close-up. He was also in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as one of the children who storms the castle at the end of the film, but it was cut.^[13] He also auditioned for the role of Romeo in Romeo and Juliet (1968),^[14] a role won by fellow Artful Dodger actor Leonard Whiting.^[15] Collins was among the last three finalists for the role of I.Q. on the American children's television show The Bugaloos (he lost out to English actor/musician John McIndoe).^[16]

Despite the beginnings of an acting career, Collins continued to gravitate towards music. While attending Chiswick Community School he formed a band called the Real Thing and later joined the Freehold. With the latter group, he wrote his first song titled "Lying Crying Dying".^[17]

Collins's first record deal came as drummer for Hickory, who changed their name to Flaming Youth by the time of their sole album, Ark 2 (1969).^[18] A concept album inspired by the recent media attention surrounding the moon landing, Ark 2 (with Ronnie Caryl, Brian Chatton and Gordon (Flash) Smith), failed to make much commercial success despite positive critical reviews. Melody Maker featured the album as "Pop Album of the Month", describing it as "adult music beautifully played with nice tight harmonies".^[19] The album's main single, "From Now On", failed on the radio. After a year of touring, band tensions and the lack of commercial success dissolved the group. In 1970, the 19-year old Collins played percussion on the George Harrison song "The Art of Dying". Harrison credited him in the liner notes to the remastered CD version of the album released in 2000.^[20]

Genesis era[link]

In 1970, Collins answered a Melody Maker classified ad for "...a drummer sensitive to acoustic music, and acoustic twelve-string guitarist".^[21] Genesis placed the ad after having already lost three drummers over two albums.^[22] The audition occurred at the home of Peter Gabriel's parents. Prospective candidates performed tracks from the group's second album, Trespass (1970). Collins arrived early, listened to the other auditions while swimming in Gabriel's parents' pool, and memorised the pieces before his turn.^[23]

Collins won the audition. Nursery Cryme was released a year later. Although his role remained primarily that of drummer and backing vocalist for the next five years, he twice sang lead vocals: once on "For Absent Friends" (from Nursery Cryme) and once on "More Fool Me" (from Selling England by the Pound).

In 1974, while Genesis were recording the concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Brian Eno (who is credited with "Enossification" for electronic vocal effects on the track "Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging") needed a drummer for his album Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy).^[24] Collins was sent to fill the gap, and played drums in lieu of payment for Eno's work with the band. Collins later contributed drums to the Brian Eno 1975, and 1977 art rock releases Another Green World and Before and After Science.

In 1975, following the final tour supporting the album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Gabriel left the group to pursue a solo career. Collins became lead vocalist after a lengthy but ultimately fruitless search for Gabriel's replacement (where he sang back-up with the over 400 hopefuls that reportedly auditioned).^[25] In the short term, the group recruited former Yes and King Crimson drummer Bill Bruford to play drums during live shows, although Collins continued to play during longer instrumental sections. Bruford's drumming can be heard on the track "The Cinema Show" on the live album Seconds Out. He was soon replaced by ex-Frank Zappa band member Chester Thompson, who became a mainstay of the band's live line-up. Collins, however, continued to play drums on all of the group's studio recordings.

The first album with Collins as lead vocalist, 1976's A Trick of the Tail, reached the American Top 40, and peaked high as No.3 on the UK charts. Said Rolling Stone, "Genesis has managed to turn the possible catastrophe of Gabriel's departure into their first broad-based American success."^[26] Following the recording of Genesis's next album Wind and Wuthering guitarist Steve Hackett left the group to pursue his own solo career. The group decided to continue as a trio for recording with Mike Rutherford playing guitar and bass in the studio, although the lineup was regularly augmented by Chester Thompson and American guitarist Daryl Stuermer for concert tours.

Collins simultaneously performed in a jazz fusion group called Brand X. The band recorded their first album, Unorthodox Behaviour, with Collins as drummer, but because Genesis was Collins's priority, there were several Brand X tours and albums without him. Collins credits Brand X as his first use of a drum machine as well as his first use of a home 8-track tape machine.^[27]

Collins also performed on Steve Hackett's first solo album, Voyage of the Acolyte, on which he sang lead vocals and played drums. As the decade closed, Genesis began a shift from their progressive rock roots and toward more accessible, radio-friendly pop-rock music. The album ...And Then There Were Three... featured their first UK Top 10 and US Top 40 single, "Follow You Follow Me".^[28][29]

	"Dance on a Volcano" (1976) noicon The first track from Genesis's A Trick of the Tail was Collins's début as the group's full-time lead singer. A progressive rock track, it contrasts with the style of his later work.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

In the 1980s, while Collins developed as a songwriter and established a parallel career as a solo artist, Genesis recorded a series of highly successful albums including Duke, Abacab, Genesis, and Invisible Touch. The latter album's title track reached No.1 on the American Billboard singles chart, the only Genesis song to do so. The group received an MTV "Video of the Year" nomination in 1987 for the single "Land of Confusion" (which featured puppet caricatures created by the British satirical team Spitting Image) but lost out to Peter Gabriel's solo hit, "Sledgehammer".^[30] Reviews were generally positive, with Rolling Stone's J. D. Considine stating, "every tune is carefully pruned so that each flourish delivers not an instrumental epiphany but a solid hook."^[31]

Collins left Genesis in 1996 to focus on his solo career.^[17] The last studio album with him as the lead singer was 1991's We Can't Dance. He and Gabriel reunited with other Genesis members in 1999 to re-record "The Carpet Crawlers" for Genesis's Turn It on Again: The Hits. When in the mid-2000s discussions of a possible Genesis reunion arose, Collins stated that he would prefer to return as the drummer, with Gabriel handling the vocals.^[32] Eventually Turn It On Again: The Tour was announced for 2007, with the Collins/Rutherford/Banks line-up.

In March 2010, Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio was asked to pay tribute to Genesis, one of his favourite bands, upon being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to Anastasio's speech, Phish appeared and performed two Genesis songs, "Watcher of the Skies" and "No Reply At All". Collins and his Genesis band-mates (minus Peter Gabriel) attended the ceremony but they did not perform.

Solo career[link]

Early solo recordings (1981–1983)[link]

The dominant theme running through Collins's early solo recordings (although never specifically mentioned in his songs) was the acrimonious breakdown of his first marriage and then-recent divorce. Two songs he wrote on the Genesis album Duke, "Please Don't Ask", and the Top 20 hit "Misunderstanding", dealt with failed relationships. One year earlier, he had played drums and sung backing vocals on John Martyn's Grace and Danger, an album whose main theme is also marriage break-up. With the recording of his first solo album, Face Value, Collins attributed his divorce as his main influence,^[33] as can be inferred from songs such as "If Leaving Me Is Easy".

	"In the Air Tonight" noicon "In the Air Tonight" from Face Value (1981), was the first single of Collins' solo career.
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Collins made his live debut as a solo performer, appearing at the invitation of producer Martin Lewis at the Amnesty International benefit show, The Policeman's Other Ball at the Theatre Royal in London in September 1981, performing two songs from Face Value including "In the Air Tonight" and "The Roof is Leaking" accompanying himself on piano. Face Value became a surprise international success topping the charts in at least seven countries and hitting the top ten of the Billboard 200 eventually going triple-platinum in the US. Hits from the album included "In the Air Tonight", "I Missed Again" and "If Leaving Me Is Easy". In 1982, he produced ABBA member Frida's solo album, Something's Going On, which helped to spawn the title track, "I Know There's Something Going On", which became a hit.

Much like Face Value, many of the songs from Collins's 1982 follow-up album, Hello, I Must Be Going!, came from Collins's marital problems with his first wife such as "I Don't Care Anymore" and "Do You Know and Do You Care". Collins’s early albums had a dark presence, usually heavy on the drums. Regarding Face Value, he says, "I had a wife, two children, two dogs, and the next day I didn't have anything. So a lot of these songs were written because I was going through these emotional changes."^[34] There were occasional poppier influences–Face Value's "Behind the Lines", for example, was a jazzy remake of a Genesis song he co-wrote. Face Value was a critical and multi-platinum success, and saw Collins’s profile increase further. Hello, I Must Be Going! gave him a UK No.1 for his cover of the Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love". The album went triple-platinum in the United States, like its predecessor. The Supremes' cover was his first Top 10 US hit (it also hit the Top 10 of Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart). The album also reached No.2 on the UK album chart, spending well over a year there.^[28]

Two years before, Collins had played drums on Peter Gabriel's third self-titled record (often referred to as Melt), the first record to feature the "gated reverb" sound, which was used on the song "Intruder". Gabriel reportedly "didn't want any metal on the record" and asked Collins to leave his cymbals at home, to concentrate on the sound of his kit more heavily than usual. Studio engineer Hugh Padgham augmented the drum sound by using a microphone normally intended for studio communication rather than recording and feeding it through a signal processor called a noise gate. This allowed the reverberation added to the drums to be suddenly cut off before it naturally decayed. The result was the arresting "gated reverb" which became Collins signature sound. This was the same 'big drum sound' used on such songs as "In The Air Tonight", "Mama" by Genesis, and Frida's "There's Something Going On".

Mid-career (1984–1992)[link]

	"Against All Odds" noicon "Against All Odds" from the soundtrack of the same name (1984), is a piano-driven ballad. "Another Day in Paradise" noicon A sample of "Another Day in Paradise" from ...But Seriously (1989). The ballad was written to bring attention to the problem of homelessness
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Collins changed his musical style with the release of the ballad, "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)", which was the theme song to the movie of the same name in 1984. The more pop-friendly and radio-accessible single became Collins's first solo single to reach number-one on the Billboard Hot 100.^[29] Later that year, Collins contributed to production on Earth, Wind & Fire singer Phillip Bailey's debut album, Chinese Wall, collaborating with Bailey on the hit duet, "Easy Lover". Collins featured on Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas", he played drums and sang on the song. Collins released his most successful album, No Jacket Required, in early 1985. It contained the hits "Sussudio", "One More Night", "Don't Lose My Number", and "Take Me Home", as well as the less known yet equally robust "Who Said I Would", and "Only You Know and I Know". The album featured Sting, Helen Terry and ex-bandmate Peter Gabriel as backing vocalists. He also recorded the successful song "Separate Lives", a duet with Marilyn Martin, and a US number one, for the movie White Nights.^[29] Collins had three US number one songs in 1985, the most by any artist that year.^[29] No Jacket Required went on to win several Grammy awards including Album of the Year.

No Jacket Required received criticism that the album was too safe, despite its upbeat reviews and commercial success. A positive review by David Fricke of Rolling Stone ended, "After years on the art-rock fringe, Collins has established himself firmly in the middle of the road. Perhaps he should consider testing himself and his new fans' expectations next time around."^[35] "Sussudio" also drew criticism for sounding too similar to Prince's "1999", a charge that Collins did not deny.^[36] Nevertheless, the album went straight to #1 in the US and UK. In 1985, Collins was invited by Bob Geldof to perform at the Live Aid charity event. Collins had the distinction of being the only performer to appear at both the UK concert at Wembley Stadium and the US concert at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. He accomplished this by performing early in the day at Wembley as both a solo artist and alongside Sting, then transferring to a Concorde flight to the US enabling him to perform his solo material, and drum for Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton in Philadelphia. While being a guest on major artists' hit recordings, Collins continued to enjoy solo success even while on tour with Genesis, besides from his number-one duet with Marilyn Martin in 1986, Collins would score two more hits from movies with the singles, "Two Hearts" (No.1 US, No.6 UK), and "Groovy Kind of Love" (No.1 UK, No.1 US), the latter two from the soundtrack of his feature film, Buster.^[28][29]

In 1989, Collins produced another successful album, ...But Seriously, featuring the anti-homelessness anthem "Another Day in Paradise", with David Crosby on backing vocals. (Collins later went on to co-write, sing and play on the song "Hero" on Crosby's 1993 album Thousand Roads.) "Another Day in Paradise" went to Number 1 on the Billboard Charts at the end of 1989 and won Collins Best British Single at the 1990 Brit Awards, and the 1991 Grammy Award for Record of the Year.^[37][38] In the process, it became the last No.1 US pop hit of the 1980s. The album ...But Seriously became the first No.1 US album of the 1990s and the best-selling album of 1990 in the UK. Other songs included "Something Happened on the Way to Heaven" (No.4 US, No.15 UK), "Do You Remember?" (not released in the UK, but a No.4 hit in the US), and "I Wish It Would Rain Down" (the latter featuring Eric Clapton on guitar) (No.3 US, No.7 UK).^[28][29] Songs about apartheid and homelessness demonstrated Collins’s turn to politically-driven material. This theme recurred on his later albums. A live album, Serious Hits... Live!, followed. In September 1990, Collins performed "Sussudio" at the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles.^[39]

Later solo work and Genesis reunion (1993–2008)[link]

Collins's record sales began to drop with the 1993 release of Both Sides, a largely experimental album that, according to Collins, included songs that "were becoming so personal, so private, I didn't want anyone else's input".^[40] Featuring a less polished sound and fewer up-tempo songs than his previous albums, Both Sides was a significant departure. Collins used no backing musicians, performed all the vocal and instrumental parts at his home studio, and used rough vocal takes for the final product. The album was not well received by radio. Its two biggest hits were "Both Sides of the Story" and "Everyday". Collins worked on the album completely independently of his record company, and took them by surprise when he delivered them a completed album that they were unaware he was making.

Collins officially parted ways with Genesis in 1996 to focus on his solo career (Genesis would produce one album without Collins—...Calling All Stations...—before going on hiatus). Collins attempted a return to pop music with Dance into the Light, which Entertainment Weekly reviewed by saying that "(e)ven Phil Collins must know that we all grew weary of Phil Collins".^[41] It included minor hits such as the title track and the Beatles-inspired "It's in Your Eyes". Although the album went Gold in the US, it sold considerably less than his previous albums. Despite this, the subsequent tour regularly sold out arenas.