“No Jacket Required”: 40 Years of Pop Perfection

There was something profoundly odd about Phil Collins in 1985. Here was a balding, middle-aged man who looked like a substitute teacher, moving records like a rock god. By the time No Jacket Required dropped, he had already entrenched himself in pop culture’s bloodstream. MTV was peaking in its mainstream dominance, and here came Collins—no leather pants, no teased hair, no smoldering glare into the camera. Just a middle-aged British dude with an uncanny knack for writing songs that could punch you in the gut or make you dance like an idiot at a wedding. And we loved him for it.

For me, by 1985, pop music had become an afterthought. My world revolved around the crunch of Judas Priest, the bombast of Zeppelin, and the unrepentant sleaze of hair metal. But Collins somehow dodged the credibility landmines that made other pop artists anathema to my world. Maybe it was the Genesis connection—although by the time his solo career exploded, that band was already a different beast. Maybe it was that voice, brimming with emotion without feeling saccharine. Or maybe it was just that the songs on No Jacket Required were inescapably, infuriatingly catchy.

No Jacket Required wasn’t just an album; it was a cultural moment. The numbers alone tell the story—Diamond-certified in the U.S., six times platinum in the UK, 25 million copies sold worldwide. It topped the charts in 11 countries and won three Grammys, including Album of the Year. If you had a radio, a television, or even just functioning ears in 1985, you were exposed to this album whether you wanted to be or not.

And therein lies the paradox: No Jacket Required was so ubiquitous that it eventually sparked a backlash. Rock purists dismissed it as processed pop for yuppies. The same critical elite that sneered at Collins would later have to reconcile with the fact that Ice-T, a figure of unimpeachable cool, was a fan. “Don’t mess with my man Phil,” he once declared, putting the haters in their place.

Collins had mastered a formula by this point: mix gut-wrenching ballads with airtight pop bangers, add a healthy dose of gated reverb on the drums, and let the hits pile up. “Sussudio” was a nonsense word turned earworm, its Prince-inspired groove burrowing into your brain whether you liked it or not. “One More Night” took the torch from “Against All Odds” as another slow-dance anthem designed to break hearts. And then there was my personal favorite: “Don’t Lose My Number.” It had that signature drum sound, a stupidly hooky chorus, and lyrics that even Collins admitted made no sense. But God help me, it worked.

The album wasn’t just a studio triumph—it fueled a world tour that ended with Collins pulling off one of the most audacious flexes in rock history. On July 13, 1985, for Live Aid, he played Wembley Stadium in London, then hopped on Concorde, crossed the Atlantic at supersonic speed, and performed again at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. Nobody else could have pulled that off—not because of logistics, but because nobody else had a catalog that could dominate two continents in the same day.

Decades later, No Jacket Required remains a snapshot of an era when pop music was glossy, unabashedly commercial, and crafted with surgical precision. Collins himself would later acknowledge that his ubiquity probably made people sick of him. But time has been kind to the album. The production might scream ‘80s, but the songwriting is bulletproof. And for all the polished pop sheen, there’s an emotional depth that keeps it from feeling like a museum piece.

So today, on its 40th anniversary, I’m giving No Jacket Required another spin. Not ironically, not as a guilty pleasure, but as a reminder that great pop music transcends trends. Collins was, and remains, a master of the craft. And if that makes me unfashionable, then so be it.