I don't listen to the radio too often. I'll put on NPR or the local college station's zany morning show now and then, but most of my exposure to contemporary radio comes in my boss' car when we're riding to lunch. After years of living in my own little musical world, radio feels cramped, raucous, hyperactive. Every second is filled with sound, voiceovers overlap the beginnings and ends of songs, advertisements boom with reverb. So when Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" came on the other day, the experience was kind of surreal.
It's a song I've heard dozens of times - and mostly on the radio, when I think about it - but it never occurred to me until that moment just how unlikely of a hit "In the Air Tonight" was. Its sparse, brooding, three-minute-and-thirty-eight-second intro is longer than most singles, comprising only a quiet synth pad, a subdued drum machine conga and Phil's mildly-effected vocals. In a format that seems predicated on constant excitement and instant gratification, it's practically ambient music. It's remarkable that it ever made the cut; I had to wonder whether people would today have the patience to sit through something like that, to wonder how many seconds in the A&R reps would pull the plug and shout, "next!" It was a window into an alternate reality where music radio could be something other than non-stop exuberance, which was at once strange and comfortably familiar.
