like many people my age, i have an admiration for phil collins due to it being something that was a part of my childhood. that makes me very not gen x, which is unusual; i am usually overwhelmingly gen x, but gen x hated phil collins, and my interaction with phil collins records is very millenial, which is atypical for me, even if my preference is towards what collins did in the 70s and very early 80s rather than his work in the late 80s and early 90s. i of course knew that collins was massively unpopular. however, i started to realize some time in the early '10s that my phil collins posts on social media (which were always posted with a disclaimer, like a trigger warning - WARNING - PHIL COLLINS POST) were met more with a tolerant level of astonished giggliness rather than legitimate revile, as though i was sharing some kind of dark secret that said something unexpected about me, and was a dirty fetish that they, too, shared. you too, jessica? i never knew. after all, i shouldn't have been a phil collins. i was posting all of this cool, abstract underground music. and then....phil collins?
well, yeah. that's the thing; phil was involved in a lot of the most creative and substantive music of his era. phil wasn't a pin-up boy. phil was a great drummer and a great producer with perfect pitch that converted a series of 60s motown hits into something that was relevant in the 80s. his records sold because he was a very good pop musician, not because he was sexy. it is precisely phil's musical ability that makes him compelling and worth taking note of and that makes him of interest to anybody interested in substantive music of any type. as a music historian of serious music, i'd be making a tremendous mistake by ignoring phil collins.
so, i knew there was a secret cult following, a quiet phil underground that knew.
i was not aware of anything mentioned in this article:
the mega super giant overwhelmingly genesis discography is being worked through and will come up on the np: page on the side within a few more days.