Phil

Phil Collins certainly has enough hits to fill out a double-disc compilation – in the U.K. he had 25 Top 40 singles and he reached the Billboard Top 40 21 times in the U.S., with many of them overlapping – but the 2016 set The Singles doesn't march through these hits in chronological order. Opening with "Easy Lover," his 1985 duet with Earth, Wind & Fire's Philip Bailey, this 33-track compilation happily hopscotches through the years. Such non-chronological sequencing does mean certain hits are saved for the greatest emotional impact – naturally, "Take Me Home" closes out the proceedings – but it also focuses attention on songs that weren't blockbusters, whether it's such meditative turn-of-the-'90s adult contemporary hits as "That's Just the Way It Is" or the brooding early single "Thru These Walls."

Blasters founders Dave Alvin and Phil Alvin have had a famously combative relationship over the years, but as Dave once said, "We argue sometimes, but we never argue about Big Bill Broonzy." So it's fitting that their love of Big Bill brings them together in the recording studio for their first album together since the Blasters' Hard Line in 1985. Common Ground: Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin Play & Sing the Songs of Big Bill Broonzy features the Alvin Brothers performing a dozen songs from the Broonzy songbook, and while listening to this is a potent reminder of how good Broonzy's songs still sound in the 21st century, it also demonstrates the complementary talents of Dave and Phil Alvin.

Since Phil Lynott's Grand Slam never issued an album during their brief career, some assume that the group never saw the inside of a recording studio. But as proven by the double-disc set, Studio Sessions, this assumption is false. Compiled from tapes from the group's keyboardist, Mark Stanway, Grand Slam saw Lynott attempting to update Thin Lizzy's guitar-driven hard rockin' style, with more of an emphasis on keyboards/electronics and pop melodicism. Several of these tracks would later appear elsewhere (on recordings by Lizzy alumni Gary Moore and a Lynott solo single), but it was with Grand Slam that Lynott first tried out such tunes as "Nineteen" and "Military Man," both included here in their original form.

Phillip David Charles Collins. British rock / pop musician, songwriter and actor, born 30 January 1951 in Chiswick, London, England, UK. Inducted into Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003…

Dance into the Light is the sixth solo studio album by English singer-songwriter Phil Collins. It was originally released on 21 October 1996 on the label Atlantic. It features guest backing vocalists, including Arnold McCuller, and Amy Keys. It was notable for being the first album that Collins released as a full-time solo artist, having left Genesis earlier that year. The album was received negatively by the majority of music critics, while other reviewers noted good points to the album. It was also a commercial disappointment, and despite hitting #23 on the Billboard 200, the album became Collins' poorest selling album at the time (it is now his second-poorest selling studio album next to 2002's Testify).