Music / Face Value

I think about it from time to time
When I'm lonely and on my own
^{2016 reissue cover} 

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've known where you've been
It's all been a pack of lies!

— "In the Air Tonight"

Face Value is the debut solo album by English musician and Genesis frontman Phil Collins. It was released through Virgin Records in the United Kingdom, and Atlantic Records globally, on 13 February 1981.

Many of the songs recorded for Genesis' 1980 album, Duke, explored the fallout from Collins' 1979 divorce. But Collins wasn't finished telling the story, so he returned to the recording studio alone.

Face Value specifically focused on the artist's emotional state during this turbulent period. The end result was a dark, melancholic album filled with themes of betrayal, distrust, longing, and nostalgia. It reflected the headspace Collins was in at the time, giving a distinctively haunting atmosphere to the entire record: from the Tranquil Fury of its opening track "In the Air Tonight", to even the wistful ballad "If Leaving Me is Easy", and the jaunty "I'm Not Moving". The downright vouyeristic levels with which the songs' personal context permeate their content was intentional for Collins, who sought to take the listener into his head, his state of mind on full display (to the point where the liner notes list "me" in the credits for each song in place of his name).

Despite its dark subject matter, the album adopts a more mainstream-friendly sound compared to Genesis' output at the time, even when compared to the band's early explorations of pop rock on ...And Then There Were Three... and Duke, combining elements of Rhythm and Blues, pop rock, and post-disco in addition to its prog elements and setting the stage for Collins and Genesis' gradual shift into increasingly poppy material that would galvanize on Collins' No Jacket Required and Genesis' eponymous 1983 album.

Upon release, Face Value was a major commercial success, topping the charts in the UK, Canada, and Sweden, peaking at No. 7 on the Billboard 200 album chart in the United States. It was certified diamond in Canada, and quintuple-platinum in the US and UK.

Face Value was supported by four singles: "In the Air Tonight", "I Missed Again", "If Leaving Me is Easy", and "Thunder and Lightning" (the latter being exclusive to West Germany). This yielded three pop hits on the UK Pop chart, and two on the Billboard Hot 100. "In the Air Tonight" and "I Missed Again" would both peek at #19 in the US, but "In the Air Tonight" peaked at #2 in the UK. The music video for "In the Air Tonight" would air on the first day of broadcast for MTV.

Tracklist:

Side One

1. "In the Air Tonight" (5:34)
2. "This Must Be Love" (3:55)
3. "Behind the Lines"^note Originally by Genesis. (3:53)
4. "The Roof is Leaking" (3:16)
5. "Droned" (2:49)
6. "Hand in Hand" (5:20)

Side Two

1. "I Missed Again" (3:41)
2. "You Know What I Mean" (2:33)
3. "Thunder and Lightning" (4:12)
4. "I'm Not Moving" (2:33)
5. "If Leaving Me is Easy" (4:54)
6. "Tomorrow Never Knows"^note Originally by The Beatles; contains "Over the Rainbow", originally by Judy Garland, at 4:15. (4:52)

I've kept all the pictures, but I trope my feelings so no-one knows:

• Air Guitar: The video for "I Missed Again" features Collins miming the guitar, drums, piano, saxophone, and microphone.
• Best Served Cold: The central theme behind "In the Air Tonight", so much so it inspired a persistent urban legend that the song was about a fictitious incident in which Collins allegedly witnessed someone allow a peer to drown.
• Boléro Effect: "In the Air Tonight" may be the most famous example of this in pop music, steadily building on its core motif until it explodes with what in turn may be the most famous drum fill in pop music history. It's practically a condensed Post-Rock song in many respects.
• The Cover Changes the Meaning: "Behind the Lines" was written as part of a story that appears intermittently throughout Genesis's album Duke, in this case detailing the start of a doomed relationship between the narrator and a famous actress. The version on this album, removed from that plot, recontextualizes the lyrics by framing them within the collapse of Collins' marriage.
• Cover Version:
  • The album ends with a cover of "Tomorrow Never Knows" by The Beatles, with an on-the-spot performance of the first two lines of "Over the Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz at the very end. Collins went on to state that he had just heard of John Lennon's assassination while the song was being recorded, and him performing "Over the Rainbow" was a reflexive response to the news.
  • For a given definition of song covers (given that Collins was the frontman for the band behind the track), the album also features one of Genesis' "Behind the Lines", which Collins co-wrote alongside his bandmates.
• Darker and Edgier: The album is decidedly darker in tone than ...And Then There Were Three... and Duke, the two Genesis albums that immediately preceded Collins' solo debut.
• Disco: The album itself isn't an example of this genre, but it did have a noticeable influence on the arrangements of "Behind the Lines" and "I'm Not Moving", with the latter outright featuring flute parts reminiscent of Van McCoy's disco staple "The Hustle".
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Compared to most of Collins' later output, this album and the one immediately after take much more influence from Progressive Rock (fitting given Collins' membership in Genesis) and are far darker in tone and more minimalist in production. Collins would return to the sparse, haunting sound on Both Sides in 1993, but the prog elements from his first two albums would never reappear.
• Echoing Acoustics: Features on many of the song's throughout the album, aiding in creating the haunting atmosphere that permeates it.
• Face on the Cover: Probably the most extreme example of this trope possible, in that Collins' face is the cover; Collins' intention was for the cover to reflect the fact that the album was giving the listener a look inside his head. Compounding this, the back cover is an equally up-close shot of the back of Collins' head. The 2016 remaster updates the cover, featuring photos of the now-elderly Collins.
• Fading into the Next Song: "The Roof is Leaking", "Droned", and "Hand in Hand" all segue cleanly into each other.
• Forgotten First Meeting: "In the Air Tonight" currently provides the page quote for that trope: "I've seen your face before, my friend / But I don't know if you know who I am ..."
• Genre Roulette: Face Value features, in order, the dark art rock of "In the Air Tonight", the Brazilian-tinged love ballad of "This Must Be Love", a swinging, disco-influenced rearrangement of "Behind the Lines", the acoustic blues of "The Roof is Leaking", the Progressive Rock instrumentals "Droned" and "Hand in Hand", the Rhythm and Blues of "I Missed Again", a stripped-down piano-and-strings ballad in the form of "You Know What I Mean", the funk-influenced "Thunder and Lightning", the disco-influenced Paul McCartney pastiche of "I'm Not Moving", the full-band, orchestrated ballad "If Leaving Me is Easy", and a cover of The Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" that recaptures the LSD-tinged weirdness of the song through a Progressive Rock lens, all capping off with an a Capella cover of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow".
• Hidden Track: The cover of "Over the Rainbow" is indexed alongside the cover of "Tomorrow Never Knows" as a single track on most copies, and its presence isn't indicated anywhere on the provided tracklist (though it is listed on the Side Two label on UK LP copies), both in part due to the song's inclusion being entirely improvisational. The only release of Face Value that indexes "Over the Rainbow" as its own track is a 1981 cassette release on WEA Records.
• Instrumental: "Droned" and "Hand in Hand".
• Lighter and Softer: The final version of "I Missed Again". The original song was called "I Miss You, Babe" and had a much slower arrangement and sadder lyrics about Collins' divorce. He proceeded to increase the tempo and rewrite the lyrics to make them humorous instead, resulting in quite a bit of Lyrical Dissonance between the Motown-inspired music and the newly sarcastic lyrics about a man complaining that a woman took too long to tell him to stop bothering to win her over.
• Loudness War: Gloriously averted with the 2016 remaster, which comes in at a pleasing DR11 without any noticeable clipping. While definitely less dynamic than the DR14 of the original release, compared to most other modern remasters it's a downright blessing.
• Murder by Inaction: The narrator of "In the Air Tonight" threatens this against the subject of the song with the line "well if you told me you were drowning, I would not lend a hand." A popular Urban Legend surrounds the song as a result, which usually involves Collins watching someone be unwilling to help a drowning peer, along with several other variations. In actuality, the song was about Collins' divorce from his first wife. He was just that bitter about it, that he would never help her if she needed it.
• Noodle Incident: It's never specified what exactly the narrator of "In the Air Tonight" saw the subject of the song do. There is an urban legend purporting that this song is about Collins witnessing a murder by drowning, but he states that the lyrics don't have any real meaning, and were written entirely on the spot; the angry and helpless tone of the song was inspired by the painful divorce that he was going through at the time he wrote it.
• Production Throwback: "In the Air Tonight" reuses the gated reverb drum sound previously heard on Peter Gabriel's "Intruder"; Collins had previously served as a session drummer on the song and its parent album, and while "Intruder" is credited with inventing the drum sound, "In the Air Tonight" is widely considered the song that popularized it.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: The album is based entirely around Collins' state of mind in the wake of his first divorce.
• Rearrange the Song: Face Value includes a much faster, disco-influenced cover of "Behind the Lines", which was originally recorded as the opener for Genesis' album Duke. Collins stated that the idea for the cover came about after the original version was recorded, when the tape was played back at double speed and "suddenly this other song appeared".
• Special Guest: Taking a page from fellow Genesis alum Peter Gabriel, the album sees a number of established musicians contributing to its content.
  • Eric Clapton plays guitar on "The Roof Is Leaking" and "If Leaving Me Is Easy". Collins would return the favor by co-producing Clapton's albums Behind the Sun and August.
  • Indian violinist and future Gabriel collaborator Lakshminarayana Shankar plays violin on "In the Air Tonight", "Droned", "I Missed Again", and "Tomorrow Never Knows", also performing the tanpura and scatting parts on "Droned".
  • Alphonso Johnson of Weather Report plays bass on "This Must Be Love", "Behind the Lines", "Hand in Hand", "I Missed Again", and "If Leaving Me Is Easy".
  • American singer-songwriter Stephen Bishop sings backing vocals on "This Must Be Love".
  • The Phenix Horns, the horn players for Earth, Wind & Fire, provide brass and sax parts throughout the album. Collins would later bring them over to Genesis's album Abacab.
• Take That!: The entire album is a huge one to his first wife.
• Tranquil Fury: "In the Air Tonight" delivers angry, embittered lyrics of revenge in a restrained, quiet tone of voice, having the emotion behind the song bubble under the surface before ultimately spilling over in the song's climactic finale.

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