23. Phil Collins--No Jacket Required
#23: Phil Collins--No Jacket Required (1985)
Top-Notch Tracks: "Take Me Home," "We Said Hello Goodbye," "Sussudio," "One More Night," "Don't Lose My Number," "Inside Out," "Only You Know and I Know"
Album Depth: "I Don't Wanna Know," "Who Said I Would," "Doesn't Anybody Stay Together Anymore"
Weak Link: "Long, Long Way To Go"
Stand-Out Lyrics: "Seems so long I've been waiting, still don't know what for."--"Take Me Home"
"You know it's really not surprising, it gets better when you get there."--"We Said Hello Goodbye"
"Now she don't even know my name, but I think she likes me just the same."--"Sussudio"
"And I was wondering should I call you, then I thought, maybe you're not alone."--"One More Night"
"Nobody knew where to find him. No evidence was found. 'I'm never coming back,' they heard him cry, and I believe him. He never meant to do anything wrong, it's gonna get worse if he waits too long."--"Don't Lose My Number"
"Now everybody keeps on telling me how to be, and everybody tells me do what they say."--"Inside Out"
"But if I said to you, 'please don't do it,' you do it anyway."--"Only You Know and I Know"
"She makes me nervous, makes me scared. But I feel so good if I just say the word."--"Sussudio"
Album cover: 7 out of 10. For as much crap as I like to give Phil Collins for his "close-up picture of my face" album covers (see below), this is the most distinct and memorable, mostly because of Phil's sweatiness, and the orange hue of his face. (Of course, this was long before a certain someone with orange-tinged skin and tiny hands oozed himself into the public forum.)
Comments: I've been poking fun at Phil Collins for his lack of album cover originality for years. (Such as here, for instance.) (If you're wondering if it's worth clicking on the link, let me just say: Rachel Ward.) To his credit, Phil had some fun with this in 2016. When he released reissues of all of his albums, he did so with updated album covers featuring older versions of his close-up face. It's quite amusing. (Unless the man is SO narcissistic that he relished the opportunity to unleash even MORE close-up pictures of his face on an unsuspecting world!)
The album was originally released in February of 1985, in the middle of my second semester as a freshman at BYU. So, the album definitely reminds me of that semester and the last few months before I left for my mission in July. And then, two years later, the song "Take Me Home" in particular was on a constant loop in my mind in June and July of 1987 as I eagerly looked forward to returning west to the mountains after my two year stint in the Mountain State. (Oddly enough, neither Arimo, Idaho nor Fairmont, West Virginia were featured in the music video for the song.)
At some point after my mission I started hearing the song "We Said Hello Goodbye." I liked it a lot, but when I found out it was from the "No Jacket Required" album, I was a bit dumbstruck, because I didn't remember it from back when I first listened to the album. I didn't think much of it, but the more I heard the song, the more I liked it, and it's definitely one of my favorite songs from the album. Or is it?
What I didn't find out until this very week was that the reason I wasn't familiar with "We Said Hello Goodbye" before my mission was because it wasn't on the album when I bought it on cassette in 1985. It was a bonus, cd-only track. So, when I started converting all my old cassettes to cds, this song suddenly appeared at the end of the album, like it had been there the whole time! It was all very confusing, but thanks to Wikipedia I now know the truth. (Ah, how many times has that sentence been uttered in recent years?)
You may have noticed that I listed "Long Long Way To Go" as a weak link on this album. I'm not fond of it. It's like Debbie Downer in the form of a song. It's as if Phil said, "Okay, think of the happiest, most fun moment of your life. Got it? Okay, now I want you to realize that as you were living that happiness, someone was dying in the street somewhere. How dare you be happy?!" This song is a definite precursor to "Another Day In Paradise," the first song released from his next full solo album, "But Seriously," which marked the beginning of the end of Phil Collins' reign as an unstoppable hit machine. (In the past I've blamed that on the movie "Buster," but, seriously, I think it has more to do with "Another Day In Paradise.") Maybe Midnight Oil could have pulled off "Long Long Way To Go," and "Another Day In Paradise," but not Phil Collins.
That said, this album is mostly filled with fun, wonderful songs. In fact, it's such a great album that I'm kind of surprised their aren't more people named Sussudio running around in the world.
Up next: It was twenty years ago today....
I've got a boatload of things to say about his album...later. Obviously, this one is on my list too. What I will say now is that I don't think that anyone would argue that Phil's face is the most photogenic in the world. But I will say that Phil's face is at least as handsome, if not more than, Billy Joel's face. Billy also had his mug put onto most of his albums, including all those greatest hits compilations that the record companies can't seem to stop making. Obviously, both Phil and Billy did it for marketing reasons--to get their name and image into people's minds. But I think Phil had a slightly better reason to plaster his face all over the place than Billy had. See, Phil had to find a way to differentiate his albums from those he helped create as part of Genesis. Otherwise, people would buy a new Phil Collins album, listen to it while they stare at the album cover, and then think, "Hey! I really like this new Genesis album!" But if the only thing on the album cover is the face of only one dude from Genesis, then people would think, "Hey! This album cover has the face of only one dude from Genesis, so it can't be a Genesis album, which means it must be a album of music that just Phil Collins wrote, and even though Phil's face isn't all that handsome, it's at least as handsome as Billy Joel's face." At least, that's what I thought when I got my first copy of No Jacket Required.
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