Phil Collins - No Jacket Required (2025 Mix) (1985/2025)

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Phil Collins - No Jacket Required (2025 Mix) (1985/2025)

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For folks younger than, say, the average member of Gen X, the dismissive hostility that their elders have displayed over the years toward Phil Collins must be somewhat confusing. Sure, he was the guy who had a raft of very '80s-sounding pop hits and was responsible for the Tarzan soundtrack, but his prog-rock bona fides (not just in Genesis, but with Brian Eno and many many others) and his chops as a drummer (he's responsible for the most iconic drum break of the last 40 years)—make it easier to see his pop records as part of a broad spectrum over the decades. But that's what retrospective analysis gets you.

But for those who were there when No Jacket Required was released in 1985, Collins' transparent and determined shift toward commercial appeal was shocking. Even worse? It worked. The absolute omnipresence of the album and Collins' face and voice across the decade's midsection—whether on radio, MTV, Live Aid, Miami Vice, Band Aid, or basically anywhere music could be heard—made No Jacket Required's charms hard to separate from its insistent inescapability. When it won "Album of the Year" at the Grammy Awards in March 1986, it couldn't have seemed any more inevitable. However, the sound of No Jacket was a logical evolution of the creative continuum Collins was on at the time; Genesis had gotten more and more singles-oriented over the course of the early '80s, while his first solo albums, Face Value (1981) and Hello, I Must Be Going (1982), married pop accessibility with confessional darkness. Still, No Jacket was decisively brighter and punchier, firmly and unapologetically aligning Collins with the sound of mid-'80s mainstream pop (the clear aping of Prince's "1999" on "Sussudio" is the record's first, unsubtle hint of this). Collins leaned heavily on synthesizers, sequencers, and drum machines on the album, augmenting them with his signature gated snare and funky rhythms. In contrast to the anguish of "In the Air Tonight" or "Thru These Walls," No Jacket Required thrives on exuberance. Ballads such as "One More Night" highlight his softer side, but here Collins' yearning is more romantic than anguished, more polished than raw. Elsewhere, "Don't Lose My Number" and "Only You Know and I Know" pulse with kinetic grooves, a reminder that Collins' instincts as a drummer still drove the music. However, flashes of his progressive background remain. "Take Me Home," which closes the record, is built on hypnotic repetition and lush, atmospheric textures; featuring backing vocals from Peter Gabriel and Sting, it bridges the mainstream pop of the 1980s with echoes of art-rock ambition.

Despite its success—and initial positive critical reception—by the 1990s, No Jacket Required was increasingly caricatured as a symbol of corporate, soulless '80s pop. What had been celebrated as state-of-the-art quickly was seen as overproduced, and, in the eyes of some, this album was the point where Collins stopped being a respected musician and started becoming a punchline. In recent years, however, reassessment has softened those judgments. With the distance of decades, No Jacket Required is easier to hear not as an emblem of excess but as a finely crafted snapshot of its era. This 40th anniversary "2025 Mix" will undoubtedly continue to burnish its reputation. Steven Wilson's phenomenal remix keeps the technological and musical prowess of the album's production intact, while replacing the glassy '80s sheen with a burly undercarriage that makes a cut like "Who Said I Would" thrum with a driving energy that seems to dare listeners to categorize this album as "thin," "digital," or "weak." The beauty of a remix like this is that it doesn't substantially alter the original creative intent by either "modernizing" the sound or crushing the dynamics, but instead clarifies the entire picture for a contemporary listener. There's a very good chance that the album Wilson brings to life on this edition is the one that Collins envisioned (and likely heard on the top-shelf playback systems in the studios he used), but that most fans never got to experience, thanks to the limitations of FM radio, cheap cassette tapes, and early CD players.