Song 33:
"Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)" by Phil
Collins
Peak: 1
Year: 1983
Year end position: 5
Alphabetical Songs by Artist: 1/15
Chronological Songs by Artist: 4/15
Video?: Yes
Spotify?: Yes
Sometimes in the process of doing research for this blog,
you come upon a story associated with a song that is just so good, it makes
never really think of the song without thinking of the story. Today's song is one such song. We'll get to the story in a little bit.
Today's song is "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me
Now)" by Phil Collins. It's from
the movie (not unsurprisingly) "Against All Odds". I think I may have seen the movie once, but
it would have come out when I was 12, and it wasn't really a drama aimed at
people my age, so I don't remember it making much of an impression. The song, however, has far outlived the
movie.
This is the first time we've heard from Phil Collins in any
capacity on this blog. He is actually a
2-time Hall of Famer, since he had 15 songs hit the top 20 as a solo act, and
another 10 as lead singer of Genesis.
There aren't many people that make that claim (Paul McCartney, Michael
Jackson come to mind as some others).
This was also his first solo #1 song (he would end up with 7). For those that have been paying attention to
the little blurb at the beginning of the posts, you might have noticed that
this is the highest charted song on the year-end top 100s. This song was the #5 song of 1984. Up until now, the best we have seen was #9
("Again" by Lenny Kravitz, "Abracadabra" by The Steve
Miller Band). At some point, that will get beaten, but that record stands for
now.
This song was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original
Song. That was a bit of a big deal for
Phil Collins. He thought he had a good
shot at winning, and really wanted to be at the ceremony. In order to make sure he was able to make it,
he rearranged his tour schedule (I believe he was on an Australian tour at the
time). He notified the producers of the
awards show that he would be available to sing the song during the telecast,
and he indicated just how much he wanted to do it. For some reason, the producers decided to go
in another direction. Not that they had
to. They had a willing artist who was already
making arrangements to be there. They
told him that they were going to have dancer Ann Reinking sing the song as well
as do an interpretive dance during the show, much to the confusion of
Phil. To add insult, when they sent him
the reply letting him know the creative direction they were taking, they
addressed the letter to "Phil Cooper". The Oscars start, and they introduce Ann
Reinking. She sings the first verse, and
then does a dance during the second, while the singing still is going on, so
it's obvious that the singing was prerecorded.
After dancing through the second verse, she sings the last part of the
song. The part that sticks out to me is
that she adds the word "the" in the chorus. Instead of saying "...coming back to me
/ is against all odds", she sings "....coming back to me / is against
all the odds". Trust me, that sounds stranger than it looks
on the page. Plus, the name of the song
is "Against All Odds" - no "the". It was all very strange. I read an interview with Phil Collins about
it later in Rolling Stone, and he said, "It was awful" in reference
to the performance. I can't imagine how
bad it would be to sit in the audience after being told that they didn't want
you to perform your own song and replace it with something that was widely
panned by critics. On top of that, he
didn't even win. He lost to Stevie
Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I Love You". There is YouTube video of this whole debacle,
if you want to see it. I really
recommend it.
None of that has anything to do with the song however. This song still holds up so many years later,
even though the movie probably doesn't. The
lyrics and delivery are really quite heart wrenching. This song sounds to me like Phil is squarely
in the bargaining stage of grief. He
seems to be trying to do a lot of different tactics to draw the person back to
him. He seems to be trying some kind of
guilt tactic. He says things like
"How can you just walk away from me / when all I can do is watch you
leave" and "take a look at me now / there's just an empty
space". That's just the first
verse. The second gets worse for
Phil. He says "I wish I could just
make you turn around / turn around and see me cry". The next stage of grief is depression, and as
the song goes on, it seems like Phil is getting closer and closer to that. The song builds towards the end. At the end of the song, Phil seems to be
screaming his desperation that the woman come back to him. He seems to hold out a little hope that she
will, which I guess keeps the song from becoming a complete downer. My guess is that anyone that has these
feelings probably already knows the girl isn't coming back. Stick with it Phil, you'll get to acceptance
eventually.
There is a video for this song, but it's one of those early
80s productions that is pretty light on concept. There are a lot of clips from the movie, and
Phil singing in front of some falling water in an otherwise dark studio. At the end it is revealed that he is singing
inside of a triangle where each side is a different color, corresponding to a
character in the love triangle of the movie.
Unfortunately, the movie hasn't really held up over time, so the video
isn't as potent as maybe the song deserves.
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