![]() ![]() And supposedly after Phil Collins wrote the song he saw the man again at one of his concerts and Phil Collins looked the guy dead in the eyes and played In The Air Tonight right at him. So the story goes that after that experience Phil Collins wrote In The Air Tonight about that incident and thats what all the lyrics like “If you were drowning I would not lend a hand” come from. So like the story goes that a while before Phil Collins wrote the song he was standing and he was on a bridge and he looked down and he saw that there was this guy drowning but Phil Collins was too far away to rescue him but he saw this other guy who was near enough to save the guy who was drowning and that man just let the guy drown. Anyway the story goes that In The Air Tonight is actually based on a true story. “This is sort of like a music urban legend and it has to do with the song In the air by Phil Collins. Yes, it's been in the air - and on the air - quite a bit over the years…and if you hit “play” at 11:56:40 tonight, then it’ll be in your head all year long.This piece of folklore was told to me by a friend while we were talking about music he mentioned the story offhand and I got my recorder and asked him to tell me the whole story We all know that “In the Air Tonight” is iconic now, but just in case you can't recall how it did in the first place, rest assured that it was a hit straight out of the box: it hit #19 on the Billboard Hot 100 and made it all the way to #2 on the UK Singles chart…and then to #4 in 1988…and then to #14 in 2007. Just to set the record straight, though, there's no truth to the urban legend that the lyrics are about Collins witnessing someone drowning and watching someone who was close enough to save the person do nothing to help. That frightens me a bit, but I'm quite proud of the fact that I sang 99.9 percent of those lyrics spontaneously.”įor as unabashedly pop as some of Collins' later work may have been, the atmosphere on “In the Air Tonight” is almost disconcertingly dark at times, which can be credited to the combined efforts of Collins and Hugh Padgham, who co-produced the track. In Dave Thompson's 2004 book Turn It On Again: Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, and Genesis, Collins is quoted as saying, “The lyrics you hear are what I wrote spontaneously. Released in 1981 as the first single from Collins' debut solo album, FACE VALUE, “In the Air Tonight” was an instance of anger inspiring art, with the song's lyrics having originated as a result of Collins' divorce from his first wife, Andrea, in 1979. Phil Collins do you not love this guy?īut let’s talk about the song in question for a bit. If you play 'In The Air Tonight’ by Phil Collins on December 31st at 11:56:40 the drum break will play right as the clock strikes midnight. We’re actually six days out from the anniversary of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” which was originally released on January 5, 1981, but we wanted to highlight it a little early – on New Year’s Eve, specifically – because of a little something that happened last year right around this time.
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