For Fans of Phil Collins

The gated reverb drum fill at 3:40 is one of the most recognized moments in pop history, but what makes the track actually great is the four minutes of dread that precede it. Collins strips the production back to almost nothing: a cold synth, a half-whispered vocal, and a lyric that refuses to explain itself. The restraint is what makes the explosion devastating. Most hits of 1981 have aged into nostalgia; this one is still genuinely unsettling.

Disney animation in 1999 was still using the Broadway-musical template: songs that characters sing to each other, advance plot, establish character. Collins threw that out. He narrates Tarzan from outside the story, scoring the action like a music video. The result feels completely wrong for the form and completely right for the film. 'You'll Be in My Heart' won the Oscar and deserved it, but 'Son of Man' and 'Strangers Like Me' are the ones that hold up.

Phil Collins joined Genesis as the drummer behind Peter Gabriel, then stepped to the microphone after Gabriel left in 1975. The band he inherited was a prog-rock ensemble full of twelve-string guitars and twenty-minute suites. The band he eventually led wrote 'Invisible Touch' and 'Land of Confusion.' That arc, from 'Supper's Ready' to 'I Can't Dance,' is one of the strangest and most compelling reinventions in rock history. You can't understand the solo work without it.

Collins does not let himself off the hook. His 2016 autobiography covers the divorces (including the infamous fax), the drinking, the hearing loss, and the nerve damage that eventually forced him off the drums. It is funnier than you expect and more painful than the publicity suggested. For anyone who wants to understand why the music sounds the way it does, the context of a life that genuinely went sideways is indispensable.