Last night I was having a discussion with my roommate and friends about their solo careers. Now I’m a huge old Genesis fan and I certainly favor the music of Gabriel over Collins (as do I think all of us in the discussion), but I have to admit that I believe Phil’s solo career to be well more successful in terms of popularity and commercial success than Pete’s. While I think we all still even agree up to that point, the actual point of dissention was that my roommate maintains that while Phil certainly has had more hits, he has not had one as big as In Your Eyes.
I don’t remember it being as big as he does for some reason. Was it really that big of a hit? Just off the top of my head In the Air Tonight seems to have been much bigger.
Any other Phil songs that you can think of that were bigger?
Yeah, “In Your Eyes” was a huge hit, especially when it was featured in the movie “Say Anything”. “In Your Eyes” was also recently a hit for another artist, whose name I can not remember at this time. Gabriel also had a huge hit with “Sledgehammer”. “Salisbury Hill” was a Top 10 hit. But for sure, Phil “I Can’t Dance” Collins has had more solo hit songs: “Against All Odds”, “Susudio”, “In the Air Tonight”, “Easy Lover”, and on and on.
Still, comparing the solo careers of Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins is like comparing apples and oranges. Their musical style and target audience is so different it’s not even funny.
BTW, anyone know when Peter will finally be done with his next album?? I have been waiting for what feels like forever!
Fingolfin is right in noting that In Your Eyes, Sledgehammer and Solisbury Hill were all fairly large hits for PG but (and I really, really, really hate to admit this because I would like nothing more than to see Mr. Collins escorted off this planet), if you look on the balance sheet in terms of number of records sold, the little, bald schlockmeister, fuckwad has Peter beat.
Hey, Hitler was popular with a lot of folks for awhile, too. It just shows that popularity isn’t an accurate measurement of true value.
But Phil’s got Peter beat. Here are Gabriel’s hits:
Solsbury Hill
Sledgehammer
Shaking The Tree
Games Without Frontiers
Shock The Monkey
In Your Eyes
I think that’s about it. Maybe a couple of smaller ones.
Now for Phil Collins…
Another Day in Paradise
True Colors
Easy Lover
You Can’t Hurry Love
Two Hearts
Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)
Separate Lives
One More Night
Sussudio
A Groovy Kind of Love
In the Air Tonight
Take Me Home
And most of those were way up in the top 10 or #1. Phil had maybe the most successful solo career of any artist in the 1980’s.
And he’s not just an MOR schlock artist. “In The Air Tonight” is a great album. Every track is great. And I like his work with Genesis quite a bit - I prefer it to Gabriel’s time. And he’s a pretty good actor and movie composer, too. Oh, and he’s a top-flight drummer, still much in demand for session work.
Phil Collins just ruined his reputation as a serious artist with that string of crappy MOR hits that made him a gazillion dollars, like “Sussudio” and “Easy Lover”.
No-one has yet mentioned Peter Gabriel’s song “Big Time”, which seemed to get a lot of airplay in Australia when it came out. And the “Don’t Give Up” duet with Kate Bush was a great song and also did pretty well on the charts.
In your Eyes peaked at number 26 on the Billboard charts
Sledgehammer was #1, Big Time was #8.
Phil had #1’s with
Against all Odds
One More Night
Sussudio
Separate Lives
Groovy Kind of Love
Two Hearts
Another Day in Paradise
and pretty much top-tenned everything else.
As great a song as In your Eyes is(next time you hear it, think of your children while listening to the words and you’ll see what genius it really is), in terms of popularity and sales it’s strictly minor league.
Then again sales do not necessarily reflect greatness; “My Ding-a-Ling” was the only #1 hit Chuck Berry ever had.
Last I heard (a month or two ago) it’s down to final mixing but Peter hasn’t written all the words yet. Seriously. And it’s supposed to be out some time this year. Of course, they’ve said that every year for the past seven, so…
Here’san interesting reference I found for Phil Collins’ singles.
Incidentally, everyone seems to have forgotton (for obvious reasons) “Dance Into the Light,” which peaked at #9.
According to this page, he’s only had 3 number on hits. (The charts they use are not specified.) The hits are: “You Can’t Hurry Love,” “Easy Lover,” and “A Groovy Kind of Love.”
Ah, wait, this seems to be based on UK pop charts. So, anyhow, there’s the UK perspective on Collins, FWIW. I’m almost surprised he only had 3 number ones in the UK.
Hey thanks for bringing up the other Peter Gabriel “hits” that I left out. “Shock the Monkey”, “Games Without Frontiers”, how could I forget those.
And thanks Bren for providing some insight on Gabriels next album, which is going to be called “Up” by the way.
I found this info at Peter’s web site regarding “Up”:
*Whilst a few of the tracks are completed and have been through Tchad Blake’s final mixing process, Peter continues lyric writing for the remaining tracks.
Contributions so far have come from artists as diverse as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the brilliant Blind Boys of Alabama on vocals, as well as Peter Green (formally of Fleetwood Mac) on Guitar and Danny Thompson on Double Bass (Talk Talk, David Sylvian, Tim Buckley and Nick Drake to name a few). The Blind Boys of Alabama, recently signed to Real World Records, were so much in demand that Peter emailed them the track for their backing vocals whilst they were performing at WOMAD Singapore.
Sorry for the late follow-up. I’ve been in, and continue to be in the process of moving.
Thank you rise. This is really what I was asking (not that I didn’t enjoy reading the other posts). I must admit I’m a little surprised that “In your Eyes” didn’t make it any higher.
puly, I think because our discussion was largely about how we remembered these songs while growing up, I’m only interested in the charts here in the states, though I must say I’m amazed Phil didn’t have more #1’s over there.
Just out of curiosity, anyone know offhand how high “Salisbury Hill” got?
