Phil Collins 12: Love Songs

So this was odd. Six years after a proper hits collection, Phil Collins doubled up with a two-disc set of favorites from his solo career, and included a handful of rarities. In keeping with his image as a romantic balladeer, Love Songs was subtitled A Compilation… Old And New. Only four songs are repeated from that first set of hits, which we guess is the good news.

The problem is we didn’t need two discs of this drivel. Four songs come from Both Sides, none of them hits; he also has a better opinion of his last two solo albums than we do. We approve the revival of “Don’t Let Him Steal Your Heart Away”, but “This Must Be Love” and “If Leaving Me Is Easy” were hardly highlights of his solo debut. The only real hit that postdated the …Hits set was “You’ll Be In My Heart.”

So what was “new”? “Tearing And Breaking” is a collaboration with folk hero John Martyn, and a sleep-inducing opener to disc one. A live “rehearsal” of “True Colors” avoids cries of redundancy with the hits album, but is unnecessary; similarly, “Separate Lives” is the inferior live version. Two songs from ‘90s various artists are mopped up—Curtis Mayfield’s “I’ve Been Trying”, “Somewhere” from West Side Story—though live covers of “My Girl”, the standards “Always” and “The Way You Look Tonight” aren’t going to convince anyone they’re definitive.

While Love Songs was a good idea, somebody should have explained to Phil that just because a song concerns relationships or includes the word “love” somewhere doesn’t mean it belongs in a sequence with others of the same slim criteria. Most of all, at this juncture we wondered who exactly comprised his audience.

Phil Collins Love Songs: A Compilation… Old And New (2004)—2