Phil Collins makes shocking statement about his songs' improvisation

Phil Collins recently got candid and confessed that most of his songs were improvised during the writing process.

Collins appeared on BBC Radio 2’s Tracks of My Years with Vernon Kay, where he reflected on his favorite songs from his own discography, revealing how the idea of each song crossed his mind.

The 75-year-old English singer, drummer, songwriter, record producer, and actor said, “I suppose, you know, a lot of my lyrics come from somewhere. I very rarely sit down, very rarely sit down and think ‘what am I going to write about?’ I don’t ever do that.”

He added, “Normally, if I’m playing — something usually comes when I’m playing a piano — and something will develop if I’m lucky, and then what I’m going to sing kind of goes along with it or comes along very soon afterwards.”

Collins went on to state that “you only need a couple of lines, two or three lines, and you kind of know what it’s going to be about or what the feeling is, you know, and so a lot of the lyrics are kind of improvised.”

Notably, the Another Day in Paradise crooner’s 1981 song In the Air Tonight was “pretty much 80% improvised.”

“I had this chord sound on this keyboard that I had ... and I had this lovely sound, which is the sound you hear on the record,” Phil Collins stated.