Day After Day #35: Turn It On Again

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Turn It On Again (1980)

Phil Collins provokes a lot of different reactions from music fans of a certain vintage. If you're a rock snob, it's easy to crap on the guy for all the poppy solo stuff he did and the hammy videos and the sheer ubiquity of Collins and/or Genesis in the '80s and '90s. And I can agree with some of that, but I also appreciate those first several albums he did with Genesis after Peter Gabriel left and his first couple of solo albums, as well as the fact he was an excellent singer and drummer. (And I suppose if you're under the age of 40, you probably might know him as the dad of the star of the show "Emily in Paris.")

The early years of Genesis (1967-1975) were very different from the later years. The band was steeped in prog-rock and complex song structures and Gabriel's elaborate and often weird stage costumes. After he left to go solo, Collins eventually took over as lead singer (after a search for a new singer failed). 

The first three albums with Collins as lead singer did fairly well in both the UK and U.S., but it was on 1980's Duke that the band started to find greater commercial success. The band added horns to songs like "Misunderstanding" but there was also a conceptual suite of songs that held onto the proggy side of Genesis. 

But the first single, "Turn It On Again," was a straightahead rocker that really resonated with rock fans, especially this one. Guitarist Mike Rutherford wrote the lyrics, which focus on a man who connects more with people he saw on TV than people in real life.

"You're just another face that I know from the TV show/I have known you for so very long, I feel you like a friend/Can't you do anything for me, can I touch you for a whole/Can I meet you on another day and we will fly away."

Even as it's more conventional, the uses different time signatures that are more in the prog vein, and as such tended to confuse fans who were trying to dance to it in concert, Collins told an interviewer. 

"Turn It On Again" was more of a rock radio hit than a commercial one, only getting up to #58 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S., although it did reach #8 on the UK Singles Chart. For me, it was another song that I heard after returning from a long trip to India in early 1980 and immediately loved. There's something about the buildup at the beginning of the song and Collins' soaring vocals that just grabbed me. I was already a Genesis fan from the previous album, And Then There Were Three, which was one of the first records I ever bought, but this song really made me a Genesis fan. I remember spending a lot of time at one of those local summer carnivals in Pickering, Ontario that summer trying to win a Duke mirror (probably just as well since I didn't do coke, which was presumably the main use for those mirrors).

In the years that followed, Genesis and Collins got bigger and bigger. Collins' first solo album Face Value and Genesis' Abacab both came out in '81 and were huge. That trend continued for much of the '80s and early '90s, with alternating albums and plenty of success. Collins finally left in 1996 and Genesis released one more album with a Scottish singer named Ray Wilson as his replacement. Collins reunited with Rutherford and keyboardist Tony Banks for tours in 2006-07 and 2021-22. 

I stopped paying attention to new material from both Genesis and Collins in the early '90s, but I still enjoy going back and checking out the old stuff, including 1974's prog classic The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. But every so often I'll check out some Genesis videos on YouTube and "Turn It On Again" is usually the first thing I watch. Still killer.