1981Released
5:33

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about In The Air Tonight. By Songfacts®.

Collins wrote this song about the anger he felt after divorcing his first wife, Andrea Bertorelli, in 1980 - he was so devastated that he left Genesis for a short time. All of the original songs on the Face Value album, including the followup hit "I Missed Again," were at one time intended to be "messages" to his first wife in an attempt to lure her back to him. The lingering tension caused by the divorce led Collins to the title, as these negative feelings were "In The Air," and affecting not just the couple getting divorced, but the entire family. By the time the album was released, Collins had moved on and was dating Jill Tavelman, who became his second wife. His split with Jill would inspire the songs on Collins' 1993 album Both Sides.

The meaning of "In The Air Tonight" became a pervasive urban myth. The story, which is not true, is that Collins watched as a man who raped his wife drowned. Another version has Collins writing the song about a man who watched another drown, and singing it to him at a concert. Yet another variation claims that when Collins was a young boy, he witnessed a man drowning someone, but was too far away to help. Later, he hired a private detective to find the man, sent him a free ticket to his concert, and premiered the song that night with the spotlight on the man the whole time. These stories (which we repeat, are not true) spread by word of mouth, then in the mid-'90s when chat rooms and message boards started showing up on the internet they were often a topic of debate.

The urban legend surrounding this song centers around the line, "If you told me you were drowning, I would not lend a hand." Collins has explained that the drowning is symbolic, representing the pain and anger he was feeling at the time. The line really connected as a rebuke, entering the lexicon along with sayings like "I wouldn't give you the time of day" and "not if you were the last person on Earth."

Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of In The Air Tonight.
DKey
MinorMode
4/4Time Signature
95BPM

Album

The album In The Air Tonight is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released In The Air Tonight.
Atlantic Records
1981 Atlantic Recording Corporation
1981 Atlantic Recording Corporation

See your Spotify stats (with number of plays and minutes listened) and discover new music.

Music data, artist images, album covers, and song previews are provided by Spotify. Spotify is a trademark of Spotify AB.

5.8MArtists
73.5MSongs
12.3MAlbums
6.3KGenres
2.5MLabels
493KPlaylists