Two Hearts

This was written for the 1988 movie Buster. Collins was in the film, playing former train robber Buster Edwards. The film was a (you guessed it) bust at the box office, but its soundtrack contained two US #1 hits: "Two Hearts" and a Phil Collins cover of "A Groovy Kind Of Love."

Lamont Dozier produced this song and wrote the music (Collins wrote the lyric). As part of the famous songwriting team Holland-Dozier-Holland, Dozier wrote 12 #1 hits for Motown artists, mostly The Supremes. For Collins, who covered one of those hits ("You Can't Hurry Love"), writing with Dozier was a thrill. "I grew up with Lamont's music," he said. "He's written some of the best songs, and to have my name next to his at the bottom of the song credit means an awful lot to me." For Dozier, "Two Hearts" was his 14th and last #1 hit as a writer (Kim Wilde's 1986 cover of "You Keep Me Hangin' On" was #13). Collins returned the favor by singing with Dozier on his 1991 song "The Quiet's Too Loud."

In a Songfacts interview with Lamont Dozier, he talked about the feeling behind this song: "'Two Hearts' is about these lovers, this train robber and his love for this girl. It just spoke of two people in love and they didn't want to break up. It was like two hearts but one heart. They were in love so tight that their romance, their feeling for each other, was like one person. So it was two hearts being of one mind because of their love. The love story they had was so deep."