In February 1985, Phil Collins released his third solo album. It had a close-up of his face on the cover, a made-up word for a lead single, and no particular concept beyond one man’s determination to make the pop music he loved. It went on to win the Grammy for Album of the Year, sell more than twenty-five million copies worldwide, and make Collins the biggest solo star on the planet — all while he was simultaneously fronting Genesis, the biggest band on the planet.
“No Jacket Required” is the sound of a man at the absolute peak of his powers, having the time of his life. This is how he made it — the nonsense word, the pub videos, the famous friends, and the year Phil Collins was simply everywhere.
The Face on the Cover
By 1984, Phil Collins had a problem most musicians would kill for: he was too successful. His first two solo albums, “Face Value” and “Hello, I Must Be Going!,” had made him a star. Genesis, the band he fronted, was filling stadiums. He was drumming and producing for everybody — Eric Clapton, Robert Plant, Tears for Fears. And he was, by his own admission, having a blast.
He went into the studio in 1984 with no master plan, just a pile of songs and the best rhythm section in pop music: himself. Collins played most of the instruments on “No Jacket Required,” layering drums, keyboards, and vocals with the confidence of a man who had spent fifteen years learning every corner of a studio. The album’s title was a private joke — “no jacket required” was the dress code at a Chicago restaurant, the kind of wink that told you this record wasn’t going to take itself too seriously.
The cover kept the tradition of his first two albums: a close-up of Phil’s face, this time in warm orange tones, staring straight at you. No band photo, no concept art. Just the man. By 1985, that face was one of the most recognizable in music — and the album behind it was about to make it unforgettable.
The One-Man Band
Here’s the thing that still astonishes about “No Jacket Required”: it’s essentially a one-man band record. Collins played the drums, of course — ferociously, joyfully, all over the album — but also most of the keyboards, much of the bass programming, and all of the lead and backing vocals, stacking his own voice into choirs. He’d been doing it since “Face Value,” building records layer by layer in the studio the way a painter builds a canvas.
It was a high-wire act. Most solo artists surround themselves with session players; Collins surrounded himself with himself, bringing in guests only where he wanted a specific color — the Phoenix Horns for brass, Sting for a shadow vocal, Gabriel for history. The result sounds like a band, but it moves like a single mind. Every fill, every keyboard stab, every stacked harmony is Phil, talking to himself across the tracks. In an era of assembly-line pop, it was the most personal way to make a record: no committee, no compromise, just the drummer who’d learned to do everything because he’d spent his whole life watching and listening.
“Sussudio” — The Word That Meant Nothing
Every great album needs a happy accident, and “No Jacket Required” had the happiest one in pop history. Collins was in the studio playing with a drum machine, programming fast rhythms and scatting nonsense syllables over the top, looking for a melody. One of the sounds that came out of his mouth was “sussudio.” It meant absolutely nothing. It was a placeholder — the kind of gibberish singers use until real lyrics arrive.
The real lyrics never arrived, because Collins couldn’t find a better word. “I kinda knew I had to find something else for that word,” he later told Rolling Stone. “Then I went back and tried to find another word that scanned as well as ‘sussudio,’ and I couldn’t find one.” So he kept it. “Sussudio” — a completely made-up word, born from a drum machine improvisation — became the lead single, released in the UK on January 14, 1985.
The press noted its resemblance to Prince’s “1999” — the sleek funk, the Linn drum pulse — and Collins didn’t mind. He’d been influenced by Prince and by Earth, Wind & Fire, and “Sussudio” was the closest he ever came to writing a pure R&B song for himself, complete with a brilliant horn section. It went to number twelve in Britain and number one in America. A nonsense word, sung with total conviction, became one of the defining hits of the decade. Only Phil Collins could have pulled that off — and only in 1985 would anyone have let him try.
The Pub on Uxbridge Road
The video for “Sussudio” is a small masterpiece of eighties charm. Directed by James Yukich, it opens with a gentleman walking his dog past a London pub, music spilling from the doorway. Inside, Collins and his band are closing out the evening with the song, gradually winning over a distracted, bored audience until the whole room is moving.
The pub was real: the Princess Victoria on Uxbridge Road in West London. At the time, it was owned by Richard Branson — yes, that Richard Branson, before Virgin became an empire — and Collins liked it so much he shot the “One More Night” video there too. There’s something perfect about the biggest pop star in the world filming his videos in a neighborhood pub. It was the Collins formula in miniature: world-class music, zero pretension, everybody welcome.
“One More Night” was the album’s other American chart-topper — the lead single in the US, a soft, pleading ballad that became his second number-one single, knocked off the summit only by “We Are the World.” Between “Sussudio” and “One More Night,” Collins owned the first half of 1985.
The Friends Who Dropped By
For an album largely played by one man, “No Jacket Required” had a remarkable guest list. The horn section on three tracks was the Phoenix Horns — Earth, Wind & Fire’s legendary brass section, the same players who had defined seventies funk, now blasting through Collins’s eighties pop. It was a passing of the torch and a tribute at once.
Then there were the voices. Sting sang backing vocals on “Long Long Way to Go,” the album’s brooding, atmospheric closer — two of Britain’s biggest stars harmonizing on a song about distance and regret. And Peter Gabriel, Collins’s old Genesis bandmate, the man whose departure had made Collins a frontman in the first place, sang harmonies on “Take Me Home.” Think about that: the two Genesis singers, together on a Phil Collins solo record, a decade after Gabriel’s exit. It was a quiet reconciliation set to music, and “Take Me Home” — all shimmering keyboards and yearning melody — became the album’s fourth Top 10 single.
Guitarist Daryl Stuermer, Collins’s longtime Genesis touring partner, added the guitar muscle. But mostly, it was Phil: drums, keys, vocals, and that unmistakable sense of a man doing exactly what he wanted.
Four Hits, Three Grammys
The numbers are staggering. “No Jacket Required” produced four Top 10 singles on both sides of the Atlantic: “Sussudio,” “One More Night,” “Don’t Lose My Number,” and “Take Me Home.” It hit number one in the US, the UK, and around the world. It has sold more than twenty-five million copies worldwide and was certified Diamond in the United States.
And then came the Grammys. At the 1986 ceremony, “No Jacket Required” won three awards, including the big one: Album of the Year. Collins beat out Dire Straits’ “Brothers in Arms,” Sting’s “The Dream of the Blue Turtles,” and the “We Are the World” album — the heaviest competition of the decade — with a record built on a made-up word and recorded largely by one man in England. It was the coronation of the most unlikely pop star of the eighties: the drummer, the divorcé, the Artful Dodger, holding the music industry’s top prize.
The Year of Phil
1985 wasn’t just the year of the album — it was the year of Phil Collins, full stop. He played Live Aid on two continents in one day, via Concorde. He performed “Long Long Way to Go” with Sting at the Philadelphia show, the two of them sharing a stage as the sun went down on the biggest concert event in history. He was on the radio, on MTV, on every magazine cover. Add up his solo hits, his Genesis hits, and the records he played on or produced for others, and no artist on earth had more American Top 40 hits in the eighties than Phil Collins. Not Michael Jackson. Not Madonna. Not Prince.
It’s worth remembering how improbable that was. A decade earlier, he’d been “just the drummer” — the funny guy at the back of Genesis. Now he was the defining pop voice of the decade, and he’d done it without changing who he was: still chatty, still funny, still the bloke from the pub video.
The Long Afterlife
“No Jacket Required” never really went away. It was reissued in a deluxe two-disc edition in 2016, packed with demos and live recordings from the era. In 2025, it got the full audiophile treatment as “No Jacket Required (Fully Tailored)” — a four-LP collection with the original album remastered, plus B-sides, rarities, and live tracks, including that Live Aid performance of “Long Long Way to Go” with Sting. Forty years on, people are still buying it, still arguing about it, still air-drumming to “Sussudio.”
Collins himself has had a complicated relationship with the record. He’s admitted he doesn’t look back on the “Sussudio” era with uncomplicated fondness — “At the time, I wasn’t being me,” he told Rolling Stone years later. “I’ve grown up a bit now and much prefer to play songs that are me. I only play a bit part in that one.” It’s a strikingly honest thing for a man to say about his biggest hit. But that’s Phil Collins: even his regrets are charming.
And maybe he’s wrong about the song, anyway. “Sussudio” wasn’t him being someone else. It was him being exactly himself — a drummer playing with a drum machine, scatting nonsense, following the fun wherever it led. That’s the whole of “No Jacket Required” in a made-up word: no jacket, no pretense, no problem. Just a man, a melody, and the best year pop music ever gave him. Forty years on, we’re all still happily singing along to a word that means nothing — and it still means everything.
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