28 April 1984
I’ve not seen the movie Against All Odds, but I assume from the title song that it’s about a woman who finally has enough of her man’s middle-aged, passive-aggressive, cry-baby sulking, and leaves him to his Ford Mondeo and his Top Gear DVDs and his Phil Collins CDs.
Later cover versions will bob up like turds to the surface of our charts, and add their own faults to the song’s built-in dreadfulness. However, Collins’ v1.0 is worse than all of them because, on top of his undignified whining, it glorifies a certain male entitlement and arrogance that the woman is making a mistake by leaving him; no mention of a ‘sorry’ or ‘I was wrong’ by him. I hope she keyed his Ford Mondeo right along the side on the way out.
