Becoming The Muse

In The Air Tonight Song Meaning

Besides the iconic drum break regarded as “the sleekest, most melodramatic drum break in history” the song In The Air Tonight By Phil Collins is a timeless classic that has had its fair of controversy because of the interpretation of its rather haunting lyrics.

I went through my life without so much as a thought to the actual lyrical content of song until the year 2000 when Eminem dropped his track featuring Dido called Stan that coined a whole new phrase for obsessive fans, to stan.

In the third verse Eminem as Stan belts out the following lines:

You know the song by Phil Collins, “In the Air of the Night”
About that guy who coulda saved that other guy from drownin’
But didn’t, then Phil saw it all, then at a show he found him?
That’s kinda how this is: You coulda rescued me from drownin’

That suddenly had me dusting up an old VHS tape with some Phil Collins recorded from a musical show. Back then the internet wasn’t a thing, and if you wanted to know the lyrics of a song you did it the hard way be listening and rewinding…  and suddenly the lyrics seemed to hint at another meaning, darker…

Well, if you told me you were drowning
I would not lend a hand
I’ve seen your face before, my friend
But I don’t know if you know who I am
Well, I was there and I saw what you did
I saw it with my own two eyes
So you can wipe off that grin, I know where you’ve been
It’s all been a pack of lies

At face value, (which is ironically the name of the album the track is on) the idea that the song was about Phil exposing the man who let another man drown made sense, that he knew what the man had done, he had seen it, and he in turn would not save him if he was drowing…

It’s a generally known Urban Legend that the song is about how Phil then somehow finds the man and gives him a free ticket to sit front row at a concert where he, Phil, perfoms the song and lets the world know that the said man stood by and let someone die when he could have saved him. . Some versions say that he had him arrested after the concert..

I was recently thinking about this song after watching an episode of The Family Guy called The Peter Principle that referenced the urban legend decided to do a bit of digging.

@beatonm5

In The Air Tonight explained on Family Guy #familyguy philcollins songmeaning intheairtonight

♬ original sound – ~B – ~B

https://twitter.com/Beatonm5/status/1836043756740497712

In The Air Tonight song meaning explained

Phil Collins has repeatedly denied stories of the meaning behind the song. In a 2016 Rollingstone Interview, Collins is quoted saying “I don’t know what this song is about. When I was writing this I was going through a divorce. And the only thing I can say about it, is that it’s obviously in anger. It’s the angry side, or the bitter side of a separation..”

The song was a purge of the emotions that came from a divorce… it wasnt conceived with a definite  meaning but just spontaneously wrote the lyrics when he was working on a piece in D-minor, the saddest [key] of all. He just wrote a sequence, and it sounded nice….

Nobody knows what the song is about, and I kind of like the mystery.

Phil Collins

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Have you known about the song’s meaning or lack of….?