Face Value

Face Value is the title of Phil Collins’ debut solo album, released in February 1981. The album includes one of Collins’ biggest, and perhaps most enduring hits, “In the Air Tonight”. The album itself reached #1 in the UK, Canada, and many European countries, also meeting the U.S. Top 10.

Like the album that followed, Hello, I Must Be Going!, most of the songs on Face Value are based on the pain and anger Collins felt while he was going through his divorce.

Other singles didn’t have the same chart success as “In the Air Tonight”, they were: “I Missed Again”, which reached No. 14 in the UK and No. 19 in the USA. Also “If Leaving Me Is Easy” was released as a single, reaching No. 17 in the UK, but was never released as a single in the USA.

This is the only Phil Collins album to include a hidden track.

One of the songs not included on this album, was a track titled “How can you just sit there?”, which was the working title for the song that later became, “Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)”. Phil had stated in an interview in 1985 that the reason why the song was left off the album was that he felt the album was “too feel-heavy”.