Some songs feel like diary entries accidentally left on the radio. “In The Air Tonight” is one of those rare tracks that sounds less like a hit single and more like a private meltdown set to echoing synths and a famously delayed drum fill. By the time Phil Collins released it in 1981, he wasn’t trying to reinvent pop music—he was trying to survive the wreckage of his personal life. What came out instead was a haunting anthem that turned private heartbreak into public mythology and permanently fused Collins’ name to four minutes of restrained fury.