On this day in (April 21) 1984, Phil Collins started a three-week run at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now).” The theme from the 1984 romantic thriller Against All Odds gave Collin his first No. 1 in the United States.
Collins rose to fame as the drummer and eventual vocalist of Genesis. The band saw some chart success in their native United Kingdom and the United States. However, their sole No. 1 on the Hot 100 came when “Invisible Touch” topped the chart in July 1986. So, despite his long and storied career with the group, Collins went to the top of the Hot 100 as a solo artist more than two years before he did so with Genesis.
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The track wasn’t just Collins’ first Hot 100 No. 1, it also brought him several awards and nominations. “Against All Odds” won the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male. It was nominated for Song of the Year at the Grammy Awards. Additionally, the song earned Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Best Original Song.
According to Songfacts, Collins had already written the song that would become “Against All Odds” when director Taylor Hackford asked him to write a song for the film. He adapted a song called “How Can You Just Sit There” that he had penned for his album Face Value to fit the film.
Phil Collins Reflects on “Against All Odds”
Phil Collins wrote “Against All Odds,” like most of the songs from Face Value, while going through a rough time in his life. “That song was written during my first divorce,” he said. “My first wife and the kids had gone, and I was left there. The song was written out of experience as opposed to a ‘what if’ song. If that personal stuff had not happened to me at the time, I probably would have never made an album, and if I was to have made an album eventually, it probably would have been a jazz-rock thing,” he explained.
“I wasn’t drawn to it initially,” Collins said of the song. “I didn’t like it as much as ‘You Know What I Mean,’ and I thought there was only room for one of those on the album. I don’t know what would have happened to it if Taylor Hackford hadn’t got in touch,” he recalled.
Featured Image by ITV/Shutterstock
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