Yeah I agree: a flawed maybe not masterpiece but certainly an opus. I'm quite fond of it (not as fond as I am of Duke though). I guess Phil gets the blame mostly because he was the one who had the successful pop solo career first (you couldn't call Peter's initial albums pop really; more art rock if anything) and then he had to include that bloody jazzy version of "Behind the Lines" on Face Value, which just tied him forever to the change in Genesis.
To be fair, his first two albums were reasonably proggy. Leave out "You Can't Hurry Bloody Love" from Hello I Must Be Going, it's a decently dark album ("Through These Walls", "Do You Know, Do You Care", "It Don't Matter to Me" and so on). It's really only when No Jacket Required hits that Phil goes totally pop, with not a prog vein in that album or really after. It really came home to me when a DJ played I think it was "No Son of Mine" and introduced it as a Phil Collins song!
But yeah, Mike and his Mechanics have a lot to answer for, there's no doubt. Two good semi-prog albums and then, cry Money! and let slip the dogs of pop!
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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018
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