Is Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required Secretly the Best Pop Record of the 80s?

The rock icon deserves consideration for the 80s pop music crown.

This album review marks the 40th anniversary of Phil Collins’ mid-80s blockbuster that runneth over with equal amounts of joy and pain.

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Genre: Pop, Rock, Adult Contemporary

Label: Virgin

Release Date: January 25, 1985

Vibe: 🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁

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👉 Click the GIF to stream the album on your favorite platform 👈

Concerts are like romances in that you never forget your first. For better or worse, specific details about that night remain in your consciousness long after the initial sensations have worn off, leaving you with snapshots that you’ll always be able to recall with exceptional clarity. I’m lucky when it comes to my first concert because I found myself in the hands of an artist I now recognize as a master of his craft: Phil Collins.

I’ve written about how much of an impression his performance of “In the Air Tonight” left on me as a teenager making his initial foray into pop and rock music obsessiveness. As I mentioned in that post, “[his 90s compilation Hits] was in heavy rotation on my parents’ stereo, which conditioned me to associate Collins with these tender, cocktail lounge ballads [and] these massive-sounding snare and tom hits.” That was the context I went into the concert with, but I left absolutely blown away. The colors, the vocal harmonies, the two-plus hours of airtight pop music craftsmanship—for my dumb little teenage brain, it wasn’t to be believed. Even though I was familiar with a good chunk of his work, I realized I had barely scratched the surface of his greatness.

That concert was over 20 years ago. In the intervening years, after devouring his wide-ranging discography that has everything from Rock&B bangers to a Grammy-winning film soundtrack, I’ve come to appreciate precisely how much a genius he is, a term the data backs up. In over four decades in music, he’s sold north of 150 million records. He is only one of three individuals to sell over 100 million as both a solo artist and a principal band member (the other two are Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney if you’re keeping score at home). He’s won eight Grammys, six Brit Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and an Academy Award. In 2003 and 2010, he was inducted into the Songwriters and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, respectively. To call him popular is to undersell it. He’s one of the most successful recording artists of all time.

Of all his solo albums, No Jacket Required stands head and shoulders above the rest as his most impressive triumph. He hadn’t lost any of his distinctive brand of “sad, divorced dad” energy, as quietly desperate ballads like “Long Long Way to Go” and “One More Night” will attest to. But, lovelorn standbys aside, he was clearly trying to break from that melancholic persona and hitch his wagon to upbeat, unpretentious synth-pop. “I have a notion of what I want to do: break out of this 'love song' box that I've found myself in. I'll make a dance album,” he said of his mindset at the time. “Or, at least, an album with a couple of uptempo tracks.”

It’s the toe-tappers that have arguably aged better than the slower numbers. They may sound at least vaguely ridiculous, especially when you read the lyrics out loud to yourself, as I did in the research for this review, but that’s the point. Collins wanted his audience to know that he could have some fun once in a while instead of singing songs that sound like he’s sitting alone in a darkened room, looking out a window as the rain patters against the glass and he reaches for another drink. While effective, he could (and likely still can) write those types of ballads in his sleep. His messy love life has certainly provided him with enough lyrical fodder. But, an aspect of Collins’ music that often gets overlooked is his unparalleled ability to create a pop hook that grabs you and pulls you in from the first note.

Let’s use “Sussudio” as the case study for this phenomenon. Like many other Collins and Genesis songs from the second half of the 80s, the drums are the focal point. They snap and whir under a quivering bassline programmed by David Frank, one-half of New York pop duo the System, who had a substantial Hot 100 hit with “Don’t Disturb the Groove.” Bright synth chords and organic horn accents flesh out a groove that disarms you with its somewhat relentless charm before Collins comes in the vocals. In those 20 seconds, he’s got you by the veritable shirt collar. The hooks aren’t limited to the extremely 80s instrumental, one that admittedly cribs from Prince’s “1999,” especially in an earlier demo. The nonsensical lyrics are memorable precisely because they’re meaningless. The power of simply repeating a catchy chorus that consists of three short parts—“just say the word,” “OOOHHHHHHHHHH,” and “Su-sussudio”—shouldn’t be underestimated. Sometimes, if you overthink or overexplain it, you take the joy out of pop music. I don’t want to do that to his song.

Collins essentially repeats that formula throughout No Jacket Required. “Don’t Lose My Number,” one of several standouts from that first concert, ratchets up the tempo of the drums while drenching the toms in particular with his signature gated reverb effect. The lyrics are similarly shallow, sketching out a thin plot about a guy named Billy being on the run from some bad people because … actually, I don’t really know. Neither does Collins. But it shouldn’t matter. You’re vibing to what amounts to an 80s take on a mid-60s Motown number, a well he’d return to frequently throughout his career. You also have “Only You Know What I Know,” which contains some synth interplay that makes you want to jump into a red Camaro and grow a mullet. Beyond just the groove, Collins’ ability to wail over a towering beat without letting it smother him carries this and several other tracks on this LP.

Later, Collins hits you with “Take Me Home,” a throbbing, hypnotic song that meets his sensibilities in the middle. The buoyant instrumental incorporates gospel and soul elements and frames darker lyrical themes about a man in a sanitarium who may or may not be on the cusp of his release. The thing is, you only find that out about halfway through the track when he talks about how “there’s no point in escaping” in part because he “[doesn’t] like ot go outside.” That underlying gloom never overtakes the uplifting groove, giving his words an uplifting tint despite its subject matter. The song’s meaning is further complicated by its music video, which features Collins doing nothing more than lip-synching in front of famous landmarks around the world. Is he screwing with us for trying to lift deeper meaning from this record? Is he rubbing our noses in it for attaching any sort of artistic pretense to his music? Regardless of which side you’re on, you have to admire the sheer gutsiness of it all.

Even among the heavy hitters I’ve mentioned, the best track off No Jacket Required is “One More Night.” It’s a gorgeous slice of 80s pop, even if it’s one of the decade's most shamelessly egocentric sad boy anthems. Lyrically, it’s a change from Collins’ previous material, much of which centered around mending a broken heart following a traumatizing breakup. In this song, he comes at it not post-relationship but during, singing from the point of view of a guy who knows it’s over but can’t bear to cut the chord completely. “I was wondering should I call you,” he says at one point, “then I thought maybe you're not alone.” The song does its best to rip your still-beating heart out of its chest as it does the musical equivalent of lowering you into a warm, suds-filled bath built on glittering electric piano and a flatter, oddly soothing drum sequence. The track was produced by Hugh Padham, who’d previously worked with the Police on “Every Breath You Take,” two chart-topping bummers that make for a fascinating back-to-back listen.

Few artists have been hotter at one point in their careers than Phil Collins was in 1985. “Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now)” had been rescued from the cutting room floor and turned into a No. 1 on the Hot 100 midway through 1984, right around when he was recording No Jacket Required. That momentum led to three chart-toppers and one runner-up in 1985—”Sussudio,” “One More Night,” the despondent ballad “Separate Lives,” and “Easy Lover,” the Philip Bailey collab that was kept out of the top slot by Foreigner’s “I Want To Know What Love Is.” It’s the kind of run that no one, much less Collins himself, could reasonably replicate. His next solo album, 1989’s …But Seriously, did well for itself but wasn’t the force of nature Jacket was. From danceable synth-pop to intricate love songs, it pushed all the right buttons to appeal to a mass audience. Other records have sold more copies or become more visible mainstays in pop culture, but this album deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Thriller or Purple Rain on the topic of best 80s releases. It’s more than earned its stripes in the pop arena.