LOVE TRAX: The Song That Made The Movie

It’s THROWBACK LOVE TRAX time!

During the month of February, we’re featuring popular love songs from the 80s and 90s and telling you the story behind the song.

Our LOVE TRAX for February 2 is “Against All Odds” by Phil Collins!

Collins wrote the music for the song while working on his debut solo album, 1981’s Face Value. But it just didn’t really come together.

Until… director Taylor Hackford asked him to write a song for his 1984 movie, “Against All Odds.”

Collins wrote the lyrics to match up with the music he’d previously written.

The lyrics were inspired not only by the movie, but also by Collins’ divorce from his first wife. He has said that the divorce transformed him from being not only a musician, but also a lyricist.

The song appears in the movie during closing credits.

It was pretty much an instant hit – it was Collins’ first No. 1 in his solo career. It won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male in 1985, and was also nominated for Best Original Song at the Academy Awards! (Side note: Collins was not invited to perform the song at the Oscars. For some reason, dancer Ann Reinking instead lip-synced her way through the song while dancing. It was a widely-panned performance.)

The popularity of the song helped the movie. People loved the song, and then went to the theater to watch the movie. Columbia Records even said the music video’s rotation on MTV helped add $5 million to the movie’s box office!

“Against All Odds” spent three weeks at No. 1.

More LOVE TRAX coming all month long here on Throwback Nation Radio!