Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now) - 2016 Remaster

Director Taylor Hackford asked Collins to write a song for the film Against All Odds, so Collins went back to a song that didn't make it onto his Face Value album called "How Can You Sit There" and adapted it to fit the movie. Collins recalled to Mojo in 2015: "Against All Odds was written in the same misery that the rest of Face Value came from, but I wasn't drawn to it initially. I didn't like it as much as 'You Know What I Mean,' and I thought there was only room for one of those on the album. I don't know what would have happened to it if Taylor Hackford hadn't got in touch."

This was the first of seven US solo #1 hits for Collins, all of which charted in the '80s. He was still charting hits with Genesis during this time as well, including the #1 "Invisible Touch" in 1986. This resulted in a bit of Phil Collins fatigue and somewhat of a backlash in the '90s, when some critics and targeted him as a symbol of schlocky pop music. In a 2010 interview with Rolling Stone, Collins admitted that the criticism hurt, and said it contributed to some suicidal thoughts. In the article, he pointed out that he wasn't the one playing his songs over and over - he was just making the music. A few months later, Collins announced his retirement, but seemed to be in a better place, encouraged by the words of his fans that offered support. Wrote Collins: "I am stopping so I can be a full time father to my two young sons on a daily basis."

In a 2007 story on the National Public Radio show This American Life, Phil Collins explained how he did not write songs with Genesis, but was motivated to write solo material to deal with the pain of his personal life. Said Collins: "That song was written during my first divorce. My first wife and the kids had gone and I was left there. The song was written out of experience as opposed to a 'what if' song. If that personal stuff had not happened to me at the time, I probably would never have made an album, and if I was to have made an album eventually, it probably would have been a jazz/rock thing. Without that stuff I wouldn't have felt the stuff I felt sitting at a piano night after night, day after day writing stuff."