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The problem with this kind of lists is that you end up saying things like "Ringo Starr sold more albums than Elvis"... If you're wondering who are the most successful individual musicians in Europe, that would be between MJ and Phil Collins, both having sold around 100m albums as solo artists + lead singer of their respective bands.
At the moment Phil Collins as a solo artist has 152,464,000 EAS while Genesis have 114,414,000 EAS. If you subtract those Genesis releases without Collins (From Genesis To Revelation, Trespass and ...Calling All Stations... plus respective orphan tracks), then you'll get about 5M EAS. That means with Collins as a full band member Genesis have about 109.4M EAS.
Therefore, if you add both Genesis with Collins as a member (109.4M EAS) and Collins as a solo artist (152.4M EAS), you'll get approximately 261.8M EAS, which is quite impressive in my opinion.
Without hesitation Phil Collins can be named as one of the most commercially successful music artists of all time. Then, if someone came along claiming Phil Collins is unpopular, it'd honestly make me just laugh condescendingly!
Yeah he's basically in the Madonna/Rolling Stones range, with similar streaming numbers as well. His EAS total with Genesis is bigger than theirs but to be fair he was mostly a drummer on the 71-74 albums, with the occasional singing and songwriting.
Speaking of which, he was the only songwriter on his solo albums which is fairly rare at this level of success.
From around 109M EAS of Genesis with Phil Collins as a member, around 18M EAS from 1971 to 1975 come from recordings with Peter Gabriel as lead vocalist and Phil Collins as drummer and occasional/backing vocalist. So, approximately 91M EAS were generated from Genesis with Phil Collins as lead vocalist from 1975 to 1993 and again from 2006 to 2022.
Hence, you have 91M EAS of Collins vocally lead Genesis and 152M EAS of Collins' solo career which makes more or less 243M EAS generated from recordings with Phil Collins as lead singer.
This is slightly below 244M EAS of The Rolling Stones with Mick Jagger as the (almost exclusive) band's lead vocalist. But regarding to Mick Jagger as lead vocalist in general, his solo recordings are not counted here.
Jagger's solo albums would amount to a little more than 5m EAS I guess, and as you said he didn't sing 100% of the Stones' songs and Collins sang a few of the pre-76 Genesis songs so I think it evens out🤓 Also the Stones sold a little more video albums (which I wouldn't include in EAS totals personally).
When I mention EAS, then of course I mean the weighted total of all sound carriers that Chartmasters has determined here, including videos of course.
Indeed, Mick Jagger hasn't sold much as a solo artist that he already has priority here to be analyzed. But 5M EAS would be a bit too little in my opinion, especially since his 1985 debut She's The Boss plus its singles and his duets "State Of Shock" with The Jacksons and "Dancing In The Street" with David Bowie have been commercially successful both in North America and Europe on their respective releases. Without really having a clue, I'd put his solo stuff at between 10M and 15M EAS.
At the moment (09/22/2023) Phil Collins has 152,561,000 EAS, but when I sum up all of his studio albums plus Orphan I only get 151,261,000 EAS.
How can this be possible?
Thank you.
Hi Landischorsch,
It's due to orphan songs. These ones aren't automatically updated like studio albums, as there are no ID/Object to link to on Spotify to know how they evolve through time. In the top artist list, the Orphan is extrapolated based on the artist total evolution (which isn't perfect obviously, but by default it's the best we can do), hence the calculation suggests that if updated the Orphan line would be 1.3m higher by now.
We now have Phil Collins' solo and Genesis' EAS. Beyond that, what I'd really be interested in are the EAS from Flaming Youth and Brand X, the two other bands in which Phil Collins was a full member. I know that both Flaming Youth and Brand X haven't sold that much, because both bands have never been commercial forces. But only with all these four formations Phil Collins' total EAS as a main performer can be shown.
Of course I guess that both Flaming Youth and Brand X will probably never be on the agenda to be selected for individual articles. And I'm also aware that updating Phil Collins' sales analysis is not necessary at the moment, because since this article was created (in 2018) Phil Collins neither has released anything relevant nor has he sold much during the last five years.
But if this article were to be updated anytime in the future then I'd deeply like to encourage you guys to include his other two bands (Flaming Youth and Brand X) EAS at least with a side note.
Thank you.
Unnecessary imo, he wasn't even the leader in these bands and as you said they sold almost nothing.
He wasn't the leader/band's boss of Genesis either (which was Tony Banks more or less). In Flaming Youth he was the full-time drummer/backing vocalist and additionally the lead vocalist of a quarter to third of all tracks. In Brand X he was the drummer on all albums up to 1982 – except Masques (1978) as well as partly Product (1979) and Do They Hurt? (1980) – while he was the solely lead singer on the few tracks with vocals. In the UK their first album Unorthodox Behaviour (1976) has sold about 100,000 pure units.
Brand X have their core of fans around the world, especially in North America and Europe, who have purchased their catalog over the decades. Surely, their fan base is certainly much smaller than that of the prog phase of Genesis, but Brand X are often mentioned when talking about the jazz-rock of the 1970s.
Basically, I would never expect this article to list all the recordings on which Phil Collins was merely a session musician. But of both bands he was a full member the way he was with Genesis. Therefore, when looking at his entire career, it would be quite relevant regarding his EAS.
Not sure what you mean about Tony Banks, Phil Collins was the singer and co-songwriter, Genesis was essentially known as "Phil Collins' band" at their peak with obvious similarities between their albums and his solo albums.
He was basically just a drummer in these other bands whose sales are insignificant. It'd make much more sense to study the solo careers of every band studied so far (Beatles, Queen, Stones...etc), and even that seems like a lot of work for not much.
From documentaries I've seen and things I've read, Banks seemed to be the one that pushed the band into the musical styles, choices etc that he felt right. It might have appeared that to the public that it was Phil Collins band, but behind the scenes Banks seemed to be the one holding the reins.
Of course Genesis never had an official band leader/boss, but even Phil Collins was quoted that Tony Banks was the publicly rather inconspicuous but internally definite band's leader. At the moment I don't know if bringing the term Genesis as "Phil Collins' band" is your personal opinion or if you're just claiming it's what the majority thinks. Because such thesis is absolutely absurd and untrue! If you were more familiar with Genesis' history/catalog/legacy and each member's share of composition, then you'd never state such inanity, even if fast-paced MTV kiddies like to equate Phil Collins = Genesis.
Whether sales of Flaming Youth and Brand X being insignificant, that's more in the eye of each individual beholder. I personally think those sales should be additionally listed to understand Phil Collins' total EAS. As I said that doesn't mean, that I expect it to be listed in the near future. Someone else can have a different opinion.
