Phil Collins Flac

Phil Collins took a long time to deliver Testify, his first record since redemptive post-divorce album Dance into the Light. On that 1996 affair, he was open to all the possibilities that may arrive during this new act and, accordingly, the album felt expansive. He dabbled with new sounds, perhaps excessively so, but it helped mirror his newfound freedom. In contrast, Testify feels a bit hemmed in, the sound of a singer/songwriter marching through the drudgery of life. This isn't to say that Testify is underpinned with despair – it certainly lacks the melancholy undertow of Both Sides, one of his moodiest and best records – but rather it feels diligent, with Collins intent on hitting all of his preordained marks.

After the one-two punch of Phil Collins' first two solo albums, Face Value and Hello, I Must Be Going!, plus the hits he was concurrently having with Genesis, it might seem like he was primed for an artistic and commercial drop-off. Instead, he responded with the biggest album of his career. No Jacket Required topped the charts in the U.S. and U.K., won a Grammy for Album of the Year, and spawned four Top Ten singles, including two number ones in "Sussudio" and "One More Night." It was such a monster success that it made Collins one of the biggest stars on the planet, something that a few years before seemed unlikely if not impossible…

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…

Like Face Value before it, Both Sides could be characterized as a "divorce album," but marriage wasn't the only thing Phil Collins was leaving behind in 1993. He was two years removed from We Can't Dance, the 1991 album that turned out to be his last with Genesis, so at a personal and professional crossroads, Collins holed up in his home studio to write and record the songs that became Both Sides…

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.

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."

"I decided to call this version of 'Going Back' 'The Essential Going Back,'" Phil explained. "In retrospect, I included too much music on the original version, and I believe that too much is not always a good thing. Hence this trimmed down selection of my favourite Motown songs." Originally released in 2010, "Going Back" was Phil Collins' first studio album since 2002 and saw him back at #1 on the charts. This album was a personal labour of love project that found him faithfully recreating the soul gems that played such an influential role in his musical life.