# Phil Collins

Source: https://www.popfiltr.com/artist-profile/phil-collins
Published: 2026-09-22T17:11:30.050Z
Language: en

> English singer, drummer and songwriter who joined Genesis in 1970, became its lead voice in 1975, and built a solo career of 1980s pop hits, film songs and major awards.

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Artist profile

## Phil Collins

English singer, drummer and songwriter who joined Genesis in 1970, became its lead voice in 1975, and built a solo career of 1980s pop hits, film songs and major awards.

## Quick facts

- **Origin:** United Kingdom
- **Genres:** pop, rock, jazz fusion, pop rock
- **Award-winning work:** No Jacket Required, Another Day in Paradise, You'll Be in My Heart (Tarzan)
- **Awards:** 8 Grammy Awards · 6 BRIT Awards
- **Audience:** 29.8M Spotify monthly listeners, as of April 30, 2026

![Phil Collins official artist profile image](https://www.popfiltr.com/artist-profile-assets/v1/47/d4d3ce1395311cf612c7956f9dc7101d01c33e55827593082ba7421f87056c07.jpg)

*[Artist image via Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/artist/4lxfqrEsLX6N1N4OCSkILp)*

- **Spotify monthly listeners:** 29.8M (No. 216 by Spotify monthly listeners)
- **TikTok tracked video views:** 1.2B (No. 6647 by TikTok top-video views)
- **YouTube total views:** 2.7B
- **Pandora lifetime streams:** 3B
- **Total platform audience:** 16.9M
- **Spotify followers:** 7.9M (No. 517 by Spotify followers)
- **YouTube subscribers:** 3.5M (No. 1704 by YouTube subscribers)
- **TikTok followers:** 682.9K (No. 6757 by TikTok followers)

Figures as of April 30, 2026.

Data

## Audience, reach and discovery

Figures as of April 30, 2026.

### Platform audience

- **Spotify monthly listeners:** 29.8M (No. 216 by Spotify monthly listeners)
- **Spotify followers:** 7.9M (No. 517 by Spotify followers)
- **YouTube subscribers:** 3.5M (No. 1704 by YouTube subscribers)
- **Instagram followers:** 2M (No. 4683 by Instagram followers)
- **TikTok followers:** 682.9K (No. 6757 by TikTok followers)
- **Deezer fans:** 2.8M (No. 191 for Deezer fans)
- **Pandora 28-day listeners:** 3M

### Consumption and discovery

- **YouTube total views:** 2.7B
- **YouTube daily views:** 2.2M
- **YouTube monthly views:** 58.5M
- **TikTok likes:** 7.6M (No. 8580 for TikTok likes)
- **TikTok tracked video views:** 1.2B (No. 6647 by TikTok top-video views)
- **TikTok track posts:** 2.1M (No. 3431 for TikTok track posts)
- **Pandora lifetime streams:** 3B
- **Shazams:** 69.5M
- **Genius pageviews:** 3.2M

### Playlist footprint

- **Spotify playlist reach:** 226.2M
- **Spotify editorial playlist reach:** 96.1M
- **Spotify playlists:** 653.8K
- **Spotify editorial playlists:** 362
- **Apple Music playlists:** 607
- **Apple Music editorial playlists:** 207
- **Deezer playlists:** 297
- **Deezer editorial playlists:** 52
- **YouTube playlists:** 143
- **YouTube editorial playlists:** 28

### Top listener markets

Leading cities by Spotify monthly listeners.

| Rank | City | Listeners |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Santiago CL | 558.7K |
| 2 | São Paulo BR | 464.4K |
| 3 | London GB | 451K |
| 4 | Mexico City MX | 432.8K |
| 5 | Sydney AU | 328.6K |

Biography

## Life and career

### Early years and child acting

Philip David Charles Collins was born in London on 30 January 1951 and grew up in the city's west side. He began playing drums at about five years old, first on improvised surfaces and then with lessons, and he later trained at a professional drama school that gave him an early route into stage work. Acting and music competed for his attention throughout his teens, but the drums never lost their pull.

Acting came first on the professional credit list: Collins played the Artful Dodger in a West End production of Oliver! as a child and took small film and television parts, including an appearance in the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night. Music won out, and by his late teens he was already a working drummer with session experience, including time on a George Harrison recording date that later became part of Genesis lore when Peter Gabriel recognised it at his audition.

### Auditioning for Genesis, 1970

In August 1970, after Genesis signed with Charisma Records and guitarist Anthony Phillips departed, the band advertised in Melody Maker for a drummer sensitive to acoustic music. Collins, who already knew the label's owner Tony Stratton-Smith, auditioned with his guitarist friend Ronnie Caryl and was hired on 8 August 1970 as Genesis's fourth drummer. Caryl did not join, and the group carried on as a four-piece while it searched for a second guitarist.

Working with bassist and guitarist Mike Rutherford, keyboardist Tony Banks and, from January 1971, guitarist Steve Hackett, Collins helped shape the records of the Gabriel era, from Trespass (1970) through Nursery Cryme (1971), Foxtrot (1972), Selling England by the Pound (1973) and the double album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974). Gabriel's costumes and staging kept the frontman in the spotlight, while Collins's drumming anchored the band's shifting time signatures.

Collins never limited himself to one style. In 1975 he co-founded the jazz-fusion band Brand X, which gave him a second creative home between Genesis cycles, and he also took session work as a sideman. That parallel life as a player, rather than a frontman, would shape the feel of his later records, where drum texture and pocket often carry as much weight as melody.

### Taking the microphone, 1975-1980

Peter Gabriel's departure was announced in August 1975. Genesis advertised for a replacement and auditioned hundreds of singers while Collins sang guide parts behind the drum kit for each hopeful; the band eventually agreed that he should take the role himself during the making of A Trick of the Tail (1976). For touring, former Yes and King Crimson drummer Bill Bruford covered the kit while Collins sang, and from 1976 onward the group used Chester Thompson whenever Collins needed to move to the microphone.

The gamble paid off. A Trick of the Tail reached number three in the UK and restored the band's momentum, and ...And Then There Were Three... (1978) delivered Genesis's first UK top-ten single in Follow You Follow Me. Duke (1980) and Abacab (1981) confirmed a leaner, more pop-oriented direction under Collins's dual role as singer and drummer, even as he was already sketching ideas for solo work.

### Face Value and the solo breakthrough, 1981-1985

Face Value appeared in February 1981 on Virgin Records, with WEA handling the American market, and Collins produced it with Hugh Padgham, his collaborator on Peter Gabriel's 1980 album. The record topped the chart in the United Kingdom and several other countries and reached number seven in the United States. Its opening song, In the Air Tonight, peaked at number two in the UK and became Collins's signature recording, built around a dramatic drum break that showcases the gated-reverb sound developed with Padgham.

Hello, I Must Be Going! (1982) delivered a UK number one in his cover of the Supremes' You Can't Hurry Love. In 1984 the film ballad Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now) gave Collins his first US Hot 100 number one, and his duet with Philip Bailey, Easy Lover, spent four weeks at number one in the UK that autumn. No Jacket Required (1985) followed with Sussudio and One More Night, and in July of that year Collins performed at both the London and Philadelphia concerts of Live Aid.

The period also established him as a producer and session specialist of the first rank. He produced records for Adam Ant, Frida of Abba and Philip Bailey, and he played drums on Robert Plant's first two solo albums and toured with him. That studio craftsmanship fed straight back into his own singles, which married soul and R&B arrangements to the clipped, reverberant drum sound that had become his calling card.

### Peak years and leaving Genesis, 1986-1996

No Jacket Required won Album of the Year at the 1986 Grammy Awards, together with Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male for Collins and Producer of the Year, Non-Classical for Collins and Padgham together. Collins also wrote for and appeared in the 1988 film Buster; Two Hearts and his reading of A Groovy Kind of Love both reached number one in the United States during that cycle, and Two Hearts brought him a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination.

...But Seriously (1989) turned toward social themes, and Another Day in Paradise gave him another US number one along with a BRIT Award for best British single. He balanced the solo run with Genesis albums such as We Can't Dance (1991) and his own Both Sides (1993), then announced in March 1996 that he was leaving the group to concentrate on solo projects. Around the same time he formed the Phil Collins Big Band, returning to the drum seat for summer jazz festivals with guests including Quincy Jones and Tony Bennett.

After leaving Genesis he released Dance into the Light (1996), the career-spanning hits collection The Hits (1998) and the big-band live set A Hot Night in Paris (1999), and he continued to write for other artists, including work with John Martyn and Eric Clapton. Live performance remained part of his plans, but the drumming injuries that first surfaced during the 2007 Genesis reunion were already reshaping how he could work on stage.

### Film songs, honours and the final Genesis years

Collins wrote and performed the songs for Disney's Tarzan (1999), singing numbers such as Two Worlds and Son of Man as well as You'll Be in My Heart. That ballad won the Golden Globe for best original song in January 2000 and the Academy Award the following March, and the soundtrack also took a Grammy. He returned to Disney for Brother Bear (2003) and was named a Disney Legend in 2002, between a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 1999 and induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003.

Collins reunited with Genesis for the Turn It On Again tour in 2007 and again for The Last Domino? Tour of 2021 and 2022, which the band presented as its last run of shows, or as Collins put it in a BBC interview, a way of putting the band to bed after more than five decades. Back surgeries in 2009 and 2015 left him with lasting nerve damage, and he told the BBC and reporters in September 2021 that he could barely hold a drumstick, so he sang from a seated position while his son Nic played drums.

Away from the stage, Collins published the memoir Not Dead Yet in 2016 and has since seen expanded reissues and box sets revisit his solo catalogue, including a deluxe treatment of Face Value. Genesis entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2010, and in April 2026 Collins was announced as a solo inductee in the Hall's class of 2026, a second entry that recognised the parallel careers he has sustained since the 1970s.

Selected moments

## Career highlights

1. 1970 **Joins Genesis as drummer** On 8 August 1970 Collins auditioned and was hired as Genesis's fourth drummer, beginning a partnership with the band that would run, on and off, for more than fifty years.
2. 1976 **Becomes Genesis's lead singer** After Peter Gabriel's departure, Collins took over lead vocals during the sessions for A Trick of the Tail, which restored the band's momentum and began its shift toward pop.
3. 1981 **Face Value and In the Air Tonight** His debut solo album topped the UK chart and introduced In the Air Tonight, whose gated-reverb drum break became one of the most recognisable moments in early-1980s pop.
4. 1985 **No Jacket Required and Live Aid** The album became a transatlantic hit set with Sussudio and One More Night, and that July Collins played at both the London and Philadelphia Live Aid concerts.
5. 1986 **Grammy Award for Album of the Year** At the 28th Grammy Awards, No Jacket Required took Album of the Year, with Collins also winning best pop vocal performance and, with Hugh Padgham, producer of the year.
6. 1996 **Leaves Genesis and forms big band** Collins announced his departure from Genesis in March 1996 and formed the Phil Collins Big Band, seating himself back behind the drums for summer jazz festival dates.
7. 2000 **Academy Award for a Disney song** You'll Be in My Heart, from Disney's Tarzan, won the Academy Award for best original song in March 2000, after taking the Golden Globe for best original song that January.
8. 2002 **Named a Disney Legend** Disney honoured Collins with its Legends award for his songs for Tarzan, recognising a body of film songwriting that also included the later feature Brother Bear.
9. 2003 **Songwriters Hall of Fame induction** Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame four years after receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, honouring hits written for Genesis, solo projects and film.
10. 2010 **Genesis enter the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame** Collins was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis at the New York ceremony on 15 March 2010, alongside Banks, Hackett, Rutherford and Gabriel.
11. 2026 **Solo Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction** Announced in April 2026 for the Hall's class of 2026, the solo induction made Collins a two-time inductee, following his entry with Genesis in 2010.

Recognition

## Awards, honours and totals

Collins's awards span pop recording, songwriting and film. His official biography and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame credit him with eight Grammy Awards, six BRIT Awards and six Ivor Novello Awards, alongside an Academy Award and two Golden Globes for songs written for films.

Inductions and honours include a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1999, a Disney Legends award in 2002, the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with Genesis in 2010 and, in the class of 2026, induction as a solo artist. The items below list selected verified wins rather than a complete career tally.

- **Grammy Awards:** 8
- **BRIT Awards:** 6
- **Ivor Novello Awards:** 6
- **Academy Awards:** 1
- **Golden Globe Awards:** 2
- **Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductions:** 2

| Year | Award | Category | Work |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1986 | Grammy Awards | Album of the Year, shared with Hugh Padgham Winner | No Jacket Required |
| 1986 | Grammy Awards | Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male Winner | No Jacket Required |
| 1986 | Grammy Awards | Producer of the Year, Non-Classical, with Hugh Padgham Winner |  |
| 1986 | BRIT Awards | British Album Winner | No Jacket Required |
| 1986 | BRIT Awards | British Male Solo Artist Winner |  |
| 1989 | BRIT Awards | British Male Solo Artist Winner |  |
| 1990 | BRIT Awards | British Single Winner | Another Day in Paradise |
| 1990 | BRIT Awards | British Male Solo Artist Winner |  |
| 2000 | Academy Award | Best Original Song Winner | You'll Be in My Heart (Tarzan) |
| 2000 | Golden Globe Award | Best Original Song Winner | You'll Be in My Heart (Tarzan) |
| 2002 | Disney Legends | Music Winner | Tarzan and other Disney songwriting |
| 2003 | Songwriters Hall of Fame | Inductee Winner |  |
| 2008 | Ivor Novello Awards | International Achievement Winner |  |
| 2010 | Rock & Roll Hall of Fame | Performer induction as a member of Genesis Winner | Genesis |
| 2026 | Rock & Roll Hall of Fame | Solo induction, class of 2026 Winner |  |

Sources

- [Phil Collins Official Site — Biography ↗](https://philcollins.com/)
- [Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — Phil Collins inductee profile ↗](https://rockhall.com/inductees/phil-collins/)
- [The Official Charts Company — Phil Collins full chart history ↗](https://www.officialcharts.com/artist/15815/phil-collins/)
- [Encyclopaedia Britannica — Phil Collins ↗](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Phil-Collins)
- [Songwriters Hall of Fame — Phil Collins ↗](https://www.songhall.org/profiles/phil-collins)
- [Associated Press — Phil Collins and Wu-Tang Clan lead Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees ↗](https://apnews.com/article/rock-roll-hall-fame-2026-class-760474e15065a369d1852cbeab515602)
- [AllMusic — Phil Collins biography ↗](https://www.allmusic.com/artist/phil-collins-mn0000337119)
- [Concord Music Publishing — Phil Collins roster page ↗](https://concord.com/publishing-roster/phil-collins/)
- [Reuters — Phil Collins says his drumming days are over ↗](https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/musician-phil-collins-says-his-drumming-days-are-over-2021-09-09/)
- [BBC News — Genesis tour 'putting it to bed' after 54 years ↗](https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-58508715)
- [The Guardian — Phil Collins can barely hold a drumstick ↗](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/sep/10/musician-phil-collins-can-barely-hold-a-drumstick)
- [Variety — Phil Collins confirms he will not drum on Genesis tour ↗](https://variety.com/2021/music/news/phil-collins-genesis-tour-physically-challenged-1235060597/)
- [Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — You'll Be in My Heart Oscar speech record ↗](https://aaspeechesdb.oscars.org/link/072-15/)
- [D23 — Phil Collins Disney Legend profile ↗](https://d23.com/walt-disney-legend/phil-collins/)
- [GRAMMY.com — Phil Collins performs Sussudio at the 1986 Grammys ↗](https://www.grammy.com/video/phil-collins-sussido-1986-grammys/)
- [The Guardian — Phil Collins and Amy Winehouse triumph at Ivor Novello awards ↗](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/may/22/amywinehouse.awardsandprizes)
- [Internet Archive copy of BRIT Awards — Phil Collins artist page ↗](https://web.archive.org/web/20141109161354/http:/www.brits.co.uk/artist/phil-collins)
- [Reuters — Abba and Genesis inducted into Rock Hall ↗](https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/abba-genesis-inducted-into-rocks-hall-of-fame-idUSTRE62F0MW/)
- [Wikipedia — Phil Collins ↗](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Collins)
- [Music Charts Archive — Phil Collins album and singles chart history ↗](https://www.musicchartsarchive.com/artists/phil-collins)