CoronaVinyl Day 140 (Famously Bald): No Jacket Required by Phil Collins

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Today's CoronaVinyl category is "famously bald," and there have been many musicians over the years who have been either follicly challenged or intentionally bald, like Isaac Hayes, Phil Collins, Sinead O'Connor, Rob Halford, Billy Joel, Kenny Chesney, and Billy Corgan, to name a few.

I'm going with Phil Collins's third studio album, the massively successful No Jacket Required from 1985.  Though Collins wasn't quite bald when he released this album, as you can see from album cover, he was well on his way.

No Jacket Required was an international smash, selling over 25 million copies worldwide, including 12 million in the U.S. alone, making it not only Collins's best-selling album, but one of the top 40 best-ever-selling albums in the U.S. ever and one of the Top 50 worldwide.  No Jacket Required hit #1 on the album charts in the U.S. (for seven weeks), the UK, and at least seven other countries.  At the Grammy Awards in early 1986, Collins picked up Grammys for Album of the Year, Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, and Producer of the Year for No Jacket Required.

Collins released four singles from the album in the U.S. and three in the UK, all of which hit the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Top 20 on the UK pop charts:  "Sussudio" (#1 U.S., #12 UK), "One More Night" (#1 U.S., #4 UK), "Don't Lose My Number" (#4 U.S.), and "Take Me Home" (#7 U.S., #19 UK).  The album is also credited as expanding the use of drums and drum machines (the latter of which Collins had been using and experimenting with for several years) in pop music.

The version of the album on Spotify is a 2016 remaster with a bonus track and an updated album cover featuring a now-bald Collins.

Favorite song from Side 1:  "Sussudio"

For a brief period of time, this was my favorite song after it came out in 1985, and I still love it.  The title is a gibberish word that Collins made up when he was trying to find a word that fit the rhythm of a drum track.  He couldn't find anything else that fit better, so he just kept "sussudio" as the lyric and song title.  The rest, they say, is history.  And, of course, it was prominently featured 15 years later in one of my favorite movies, American Psycho.

Favorite song from Side 2:  "Don't Lose My Number"
Collins has said that he improvised the lyrics and even he himself doesn't fully understand what they mean.  I'll let you read my Retro Video of the Week commentary about it from this past February to get my take on what the lyrics mean.  But regardless of what the song might mean, it's a great pop/rock song.