The Phil Collins Paradox
Phil Collins is probably a real nice guy. He’s obviously supremely talented. That he happens to be the avatar of soulless, corporate pop hits is just happenstance. Someone had to be Phil Collins, so Phil did that. It also bears saying that I have been called a music snob, and that’s primarily based on the words that have come out of my mouth, so there must be some truth in it.
But that’s enough equivocating. The Phil Collins Paradox is basically this: As we learn more and more about a given subject, say music, we base some part of our growing expertise on rejecting parts of it. So, if you were a music snob you might think, “Phil Collins is the worst. His music makes my skin crawl.” This makes you feel superior, but it’s not very fair to Phil, nor does it leave a lot of room for his legions of fans to also feel like experts about music. When you’re younger, this kind of sociological jiu-jitsu works fine. It helps inflate your fragile ego. If you were into bikes, you might decide that certain bikes were really bad, and that anyone who rode one of them was a dork. In your mind, you have a sensibility that appreciates the finer things, the better bikes, the better everything, and you become a little bit insufferable.
I can explain this to you, because I have been this person.
But here’s the Paradox part. As you get older, your appreciation of finer things might grow deeper, even more keen, more romantic, but simultaneously your need to occupy this place of artificial superiority ebbs away. You either stop caring what anyone else is riding, or you even come to appreciate what seemed like simpler things. You come to love Phil Collins.
About two years ago my friend Fez said to me, “You know I’ve been listening to Phil Collins lately, and I think it might be total genius.” Fez is a real musician. A talented one. He hears things I’m sure I don’t. I said, “You’re wrong, it’s total garbage.” But when I said it, I didn’t mean it or care if I meant it. We laughed about it. We sang some Phil Collins choruses together. Younger me quietly jumped off a cliff.
Padraig and I used to run Red Kite Prayer which was a site all about the insider knowledge of the cycling obsessed. And it was fun, and some of the writing was good. I don’t regret it, because I learned an awful lot during that time, but now we are The Cycling Independent, a site that actually tries to share what’s good about bikes and riding them with everyone we possibly can. We have become Phil Collins.
What a surprise.
I’ll be honest. Phil’s music still gives me the howling fantods, but in a way I have come to love. And I try to remember that being a snob is easy, just like any exercise that is purely ego-based. Disdain ultimately leads to nothing, like tilting at windmills. Perhaps another piece of this paradox is that, without the windmills, the tilter is no one at all.
Hello Emlyn,
I half agree and half disagree. 😁 Phil Collins has a lot of “faces”. If we talk about the 80’s and Genesis, then I think your are totally right, it’s a lot of rubbish. But I would like to invite you to have listen to “Selling England By The Pound” (for example) because it is a fine example of good prog-rock. Also, Brand X and the album “Unorthodox Behaviour” is very nice if you enjoy a bit of Jazz-Rock, Fusion. I know you like your music hard and raw, but give it a try (if you haven’t already).
I agree with the Phil Collins Paradox (PCP for the remainder of my response) 100%, but I will get into a tangent viewpoint and an actual exception in Mr. Collins oeuvre below. I have come to embrace the PCP, appreciating many artists that I either did not give AF about or actively despised years ago. File a great deal of country music, almost all New Wave, the majority of what is referred to as Classic Rock, Disco and more here. Nowadays even if I actively dislike any particular song playing I can at least find something humorous about it. I’ll work on giving that viewpoint a fun name like your PCP.
However, specific to Mr. Collins of Paradox fame the 1980 hit song “Turn It Om Again” from Genesis I argue is a solid banger. It has bizarre timing that you cannot dance to but is driving, it presciently concerns media obsession (uh, hello?) and I believe could be a unique cover with some fuzzy guitar. It is catchy AF too. The proggy keyboard interlude/bridge isn’t my thing, but as noted in my unnamed paradox above it provides some comic relief. As for the rest of PC’s numbers, yes total garbage. That’s great though ain’t it?
Speaking of simpler things, I read a review of the Surly Preamble in my latest Adventure Cycling. Simple bike, looks nice, has all the necessary bits. I could even see myself owning and riding one.
Its one thing to cram the garage with high end stuff. Quite the other to not appreciate basic good equipment that folks on the steep uphill part of the salary curve can afford. I suspect unless one is a trust fund baby, we’ve all been there when, as my friend Gary likes to say, we had legs and no money rather than money and no legs.