Phil Collins Doesn’t Know What This 1981 Song Is About Because He Wrote It “Spontaneously”

“In The Air Tonight” is easily one of Phil Collins‘ most well-known hits. It’s also the first song that the ex-Genesis frontman ever put out as a solo artist.

Apparently, as Collins told Rolling Stone, the lyrics to this one were written pretty much on the fly. Collins also used a pattern from a CR78 drum machine to help create the bones of the song.

“I wrote the lyrics spontaneously,” he shared. “I’m not quite sure what the song is about, but there’s a lot of anger, a lot of despair, and a lot of frustration.”

In his band, Genesis, Collins was pretty used to coming up with the vocal parts of songs later on in the recording process. But for The Face Value, he knew he wanted to come up with the vocals earlier.

“I remember the first principle I had for making my record was that I would get a voice down very quickly so everything else would fit to the voice,” he told Mix Magazine. “The lyrics you hear for ‘In the Air Tonight’, I just sang. I opened my mouth and they came out. I never wrote anything down and then afterward, I listened to it and wrote them down.”

Was “In the Air Tonight” About Collins’ Divorce?

When “In The Air Tonight” came out, Phil Collins had recently divorced his first wife, Andrea Bertorelli. The couple first met at school in West London, at just 11 years old. A lot of people seem to think this song was inspired by the divorce. According to Collins, though, “In The Air Tonight” is not about “whatever you think it is.”

After finishing up a tour with Genesis in the late 70s, Collins got to work on solo music. He was depressed and miserable, and getting used to a life where he “had no one to answer to.”

“I took over the master bedroom you know, moved everything out and put my studio in there,” he said in 2015 interview with Top 2000 a gogo. “And it wasn’t sound-proofed, and it wasn’t you know, there were clicks and buzzes if the fridge went on or the phone rang, you heard it.”

It’s possible that this song isn’t about anything in particular. However, Collins has admitted that he was definitely feeling a lot of emotions at the time that he wrote it.

“…There’s a lot of anger in there, I think but I didn’t really ever intend it to be that way,” he explained of the song. “It’s just spontaneous lyrics so I guess I wasn’t afraid to show my feelings…”

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