this week’s obsession: Phil Collins “take me home”

Phil Collins hardly needs defending as an artist or a songwriter (but if you want a derfense, here you go), though I know most of his catalog practically defines the now-defunct genre of “Adult Contemporary.” But I could sing along to “Sussudio” or “In the Air Tonight” all day long, not to mention “Invisible Touch” or “I Can’t Dance” (though those are technically Genesis). I stole my dad’s copy of Serious Hits … Live! and listened to it soooo much.

But this week’s obsession hit me hard while driving to work and it was his hit from 1985’s No Jacket Required — “Take Me Home.”

What I love about the song is how perfectly encapsulates a feeling of optimistic longing. Phil Collins clarified in a 1997 episode of VH1 Storytellers that the song was inspired on the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which makes it about being locked up than actually returning home.

It’s a long, slow build, an nearly insane 4 minute wait for the first chorus. That brilliant repeated rhythmic figure takes a mid-tempo four beat and makes it an anticipatory, breathless half-time feel. Three times we get what is a sort of pre-chorus with “No…I don’t mind” section without any resolution to the chorus. Each time it comes around a little piece is added, with a little high synth sitting in the right ear, a little guitar hiding back in the left ear.

And the chorus is a simple shift from the tonic chord to the IV, but the bass stays on one note, grounding the listener and giving the whole line a feeling of reaching but never quite getting where you want to be. Maybe I just felt that sense of striving so keenly when the song came on, but it hit me like a ton of bricks.