Phil Collins - Face Value (1981)

Face Value is the title of Phil Collins' debut solo album, released in February 1981. The album includes one of Collins' biggest, and perhaps most enduring hits, "In the Air Tonight". The album itself reached #1 in the UK, Canada, and many European countries, also meeting the U.S. Top 10.

Like the album that followed, Hello, I Must Be Going!, most of the songs on Face Value are based on the pain and anger Collins felt while he was going through his divorce.


Other singles didn't have the same chart success as "In the Air Tonight", they were: "I Missed Again", which reached No. 14 in the UK and No. 19 in the USA. Also "If Leaving Me Is Easy" was released as a single, reaching No. 17 in the UK, but was never released as a single in the USA.


This is the only Phil Collins album to include a hidden track.

One of the songs not included on this album, was a track titled "How can you just sit there?", which was the working title for the song that later became, "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)". Phil had stated in an interview in 1985 that the reason why the song was left off the album was that he felt the album had "too many ballads".

As it turned out, this is probably Collins' most balanced, and least 'pop' of all his albums, focusing as it does on Soul, R 'n B and funk styles. The only daliance into pop territory comes right at the end, with a disappointingly unimaginitave cover of the classic Beatles Revolver album track Tomorrow Never Knows. That aside, Face Value easily stands the test of time as one of the most mature albums of the decade.

With his next album Hello I Must Be Going, Collins would retain some of his soul leanings, most notably on the motown cover Can't Hurry Love, before moving into the mid-80s with his most poppy effort to date, No Jacket Required. Happily there are no cheesy pop sounds to be found on Face Value.


01 In The Air Tonight
02 This Must Be Love
03 Behind The Lines
04 Roof Is Leaking, The
05 Droned
06 Hand In Hand
07 I Missed Again
08 Thunder And Lightning
09 You Know What I Mean
10 I'm Not Moving
11 If Leaving Me Is Easy
12 Tommorrow Never Knows