Phil Collins catalog reissues update

Phil Collins' "Take A Look At Me Now" retrospective campaign commences at the end of the month with the January 29 releases of deluxe editions of his classic albums Face Value and Both Sides.

The next stage in the series comes on February 26 with brand new versions of Hello, I Must Be Going! and Dance Into The Light.

The reissue campaign finds Phil Collins revisiting a career that can boast over 100 million sales and numerous worldwide #1 albums. His remaining four solo studio albums will also be released in the same format in the coming months.

Entirely curated and compiled by Collins himself, his idea for the "Take A Look At Me Now" concept is to examine how his songs have evolved over time, with the majority of the additional content throughout the series focused on live versions of the tracks. By contrasting the original studio versions of the material with later performances, the series demonstrates how Collins' songs take on a life of their own once they're freed from the confines of the studio.

Initially released in 1982, Collins' second album Hello, I Must Be Going! focused on a more organically produced sound than his debut, with lyrics on tracks such as "I Don't Care Anymore" and "Thru These Walls" providing a darker thematic core. By contrast, the album's biggest hit was Collins' upbeat interpretation of The Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love," which became his first solo #1 single. Hello, I Must Be Going! itself peaked at #2, and Collins would soon earn his first Grammy® and Brit Award nominations.

1996's Dance Into The Light presented a flavor of the unexpected as elements of world music came to the fore, most notably with flourishes of Afrobeat-styled percussion on several tracks. Both the album and its title track reached the Top 10 upon release. It concludes with a new take on Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'."

The deluxe editions of the albums will also be completed with carefully selected demos and B-sides.

"I've always been quite proud of my demos and have often made them available as B-sides, but with a few exceptions, I have avoided including those on these collections," says Collins. "Instead, I've focused on how nicely the songs developed when played on stage, rather than showing how they originated."

As with the rest of the reissue series, Hello, I Must Be Going! and Dance Into The Light will be available as 2-CD and digital versions which feature the remastered album and the additional content, as well as the 180-gram heavyweight audiophile vinyl format which features the remastered album as a standalone product.

Each album in the series will be remastered by Nick Davis, who earned a Grammy nomination for Best Surround Sound album for his work on the Genesis '1970-1975' box set. Davis has also worked on all of the Genesis retrospective reissues.  Each album features a bold new artwork concept in which Collins has recreated his poses from the original album covers with new photography that was shot in the present day.