Critics were not worried when Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers worked together in 2013. This was the meeting of two brilliant musical minds, who across separate decades have shaped trends. And so together, with Daft Punk, the remaining musical world shuddered at the prospect of new groundbreaking innovation.
Rodgers’ disco strumming was paired with Pharrell’s modern rhythm sensibilities, and together they flourished with the electronic touches of Daft Punk to ultimately create one of music’s most irritating songs of all time. It was a damp squib, and when commercial powers decided to ram it down our throats on any given platform, well, it became borderline insufferable.
It went to prove, that despite the ease with which iconic musicians can be paired in the studio, the outcome isn’t always what we might have desired. Caught in the limbo of their respective eras and genres, the combination can sound more muddled than infused.
These misfires are inevitable byproducts of breaking the mould, which, respectively, those artists are all familiar with. They are innovative in their own right and have created legacy careers on the very fact that they pursued sounds not yet popularised by anyone. After all, Nile Rodgers fronted the movement of a genre that, for a brief moment, was the most hated in history.
Again, this is all par for the course of being great and many musicians before and after Rodgers have experienced hatred in the face of their own innovation. One such artist is Phil Collins. It seemed as though the soaring heights of musical fame brought with it a legion of haters who forced Collins to build up a wall of defence.
So in his pursuit of musical innovation, when there were eventual misfires, Collins would take extreme exception to any criticism, lambasting journalists and fans alike, painting the picture of a misunderstood genius.
Regardless, he pushed on through every decade, as an omnipresent figure in popular music, turning his hand to whatever genre seemed to be burgeoning at the time. It ultimately resulted in the rap/R&B covers album Urban Renewel, which for many staked a further claim for Collins denunciation.
By this point though, Collins was more resistant to the hatred, and deliberately pushed on, partly with the hopes of creating a legacy in a new genre and partly to open relationships with future collaborators.
So when asked if he regretted the project, he said, “No, I generally do things that are tremendously unfashionable; if you start worrying about that, you do things that aren’t really true to you. Music critics tend to put people in boxes, but if you actually talk to the people involved, there’s a much more open field.”
He then continued, citing a man who I worry is perhaps one bad collaboration from dampening his legacy, creating yet another commercial earworm that none of us need. “For example, Pharrell Williams and I are desperate to work together. I’m always pleasantly surprised when young black kids come up to me and say, ‘Yeah man, I love …But Seriously‘.”
To this day, the collaboration hasn’t come to fruition, and there is no telling if it will. But if it does, I think we can all agree that we don’t need another Phil Collins foray into hip-hop.
