Phil improvised the lyrics during a songwriting session in the studio. The song builds up until an explosive burst of drums releases the tension.
#Something in the air tonight lyrics series
It consists of a series of ominous chords, played by a Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 over a drum machine pattern (the Roland CR-78 Disco-2 pattern), processed electric guitar and vocoded vocals. The song is known for its atmospheric production and rather macabre theme, and was thought to have been influenced by the likes of Brian Eno and his ex-bandmate Peter Gabriel. Of course, none of these stories are true.
#Something in the air tonight lyrics free
Later, he hired a private detective to find the man, sent him a free ticket to his concert, and premiered the song that night with the spotlight on the man the whole time. Yet another version claims that when Phil was a young boy, he witnessed a man drowning someone but was too far away to help. Another version was that Phil wrote the song about a man who watched another man drown, and sang it to him at a concert. The story goes that Phil watched as a man who once attacked his wife drowned. 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." Phil said in 2016: "I wrote the lyrics spontaneously. The divorce contributed to his 1979 hiatus from Genesis, until the band regrouped in October of that year to record the album Duke.Īll of the original songs on the Face Value album, including follow-up hit 'I Missed Again', were intended to be "messages" to his first wife, in an attempt to lure her back to him.
Phil wrote the song during the grief he felt after divorcing his first wife Andrea Bertorelli in 1980. The album, when it does come out, will have a lot of different styles on it."
Phil said at the time: "One ambition is to do my own album which will have a lot of variety. Read more: This performance of 'In the Air Tonight' by Phil Collins is incredible He had been planning to do a solo album for some time by 1981. The urban legend is referenced in the song "Stan" by Eminem.What a way to start! By 1978, he had been part of Genesis for nearly eight years, and had reluctantly accepted the role of frontman following Peter Gabriel's departure.įor the band's album 'And Then There Were Free', they had taken on a more mainstream sound, with songs such as 'Follow You Follow Me', with Phil's vocals at the forefront. It's so frustrating, 'cos this is one song out of all the songs probably that I've ever written that I really don't know what it's about, you know? ” And then every time I go back to America the story gets Chinese whispers, it gets more and more elaborate. So what makes it even more comical is when I hear these stories which started many years ago, particularly in America, of someone come up to me and say, 'Did you really see someone drowning?' I said, 'No, wrong'. It's the angry side, or the bitter side of a separation. And the only thing I can say about it is that it's obviously in anger. When I was writing this I was going through a divorce. Collins has denied all such stories he commented on the legends about the song in a BBC World Service interview: Various, increasingly embroidered variations on the legend emerged over time, with the stories often culminating in Collins singling out the guilty party while singing the song at a concert. MESSAGE AIMED AT WIFE AND CLEVERLY DELIVERED.Īn urban legend has arisen around "In the Air Tonight" according to which the lyrics are based on a real drowning incident that Collins witnessed. This is the reference point for his wife to see that this is the time he suspected her of cheating on him. Paint pot in the BBC TOTP video is about Phil doing the DIY at home when his wife was out messing around.
So it's a song about gut feeling and dread and suspicion and unfaithfulness. Hindsight if you like is a metaphor in the lyric. Possibly his wife cheated on him and he knew it and knew the other man.Ĭhorus echo's a feeling about something wrong, an instinct, a foreboding of things gone wrong and of a change coming to their relationship. He has covered up the real message that he was trying to get across in this dig at his former partner by passing it off as a sort of semi- sub conscious metaphor and saying it meant nothing.Īnger, knowing something and wronged. I think Phil has covered up the real meaning with his story of the lyrics not really having any particular reference to a specific example event in his life. Sub conscious leaking of lyrics that represent his feelings about his relationship at the time.
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