Trivia / Face Value

• Channel Hop: Unlike Peter Gabriel, who stayed on Genesis' label Charisma Records for its own solo career up until its 1986 absorption into its parent label Virgin Records (thanks to Virgin being bought out by EMI), Collins opted to release Face Value on Virgin itself, and would stick with them throughout his solo career until shifting to his Face Value Records vanity label in 1996. In the US, however, he stuck with Genesis' American distributors, Atlantic Records.
• Creator Breakdown: Like Genesis' Duke immediately before it, Face Value directly came about as a result of Collins' messy divorce from his first wife, and his state of mind at the time is more than apparent on the record.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: People misinterpreted the lyrics "Well, if you told me you were drowning/I would not lend a hand" from "In the Air Tonight" and somehow created a story about how Collins saw a guy refusing to help a friend of his who drowned as a kid, then at a concert saw that guy again and exposed him to the audience, driving him to commit suicide. Eminem of all people mentions it in the song "Stan". Collins debunked the rumors in interviews, clarifying that the lyrics were actually about his divorce from his first wife.
• Reality Subtext: Most of the songs on the album (apart from the covers of "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Over the Rainbow") were directly influenced by and direct allegories for Collins' divorce from his first wife in 1979.
• Referenced by...:
  • More indirect, but Frida Lyngstad of ABBA would listen to this album constantly following the break-up of her band and her divorce from bandmate Benny Andersson. She reached out to Collins to help her with her first English-language solo album. He would produce, and do the drumming for, the song "I Know There's Something Going On", which had very similar theming to "In the Air Tonight". That song would reach #13 on the Billboard Hot 100, and finish #20 on the year-end Hot 100 for 1983.
  • According to a tweet by composer David Wise, the percussion track in the Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest song "Bayou Boogie" is directly based on the drum machine from "In the Air Tonight".
  • Eminem's song "Stan" recounts the urban legend that "In the Air Tonight" is about Collins getting revenge on someone who refused to save a drowning victim.
  • In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, where Collins himself appears as a guest character, completing his sidequest unlocks the ability to buy tickets to a concert performance of "In the Air Tonight".
  • "In the Air Tonight" had a major reference in the 2009 film The Hangover. The bachelor party gang ends up in a hotel room occupied by Mike Tyson, who is jamming out to the song, and halts an attempt to address him so he could air-drum its famous drum fill.
    Mike Tyson: Shh, shh... This is my favorite part coming up right now.

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