"Easy Lover," Phil Collins

The final part of the Phil Collins trilogy/trifecta is “Easy Lover,” a duet with Philip Bailey.  

It’s like Collins was too busy to film a real music video.  Instead, a crew just followed him around for a couple days while he did promotion for the song and they turned that into the music video we have today.  (Why else would we be subjected to watching him get his hair trimmed at the 1:15 mark?)

Then there are the backstage shenanigans.  As we’ve seen in “Sussudio,” Collins loves to bust out wacky dance moves.  In “Easy Lover,” he’s full of them, even doing a Beyoncé-like booty shake around the 3:00 mark in his very best sweater vest and khakis.  (As a sidenote, the more I rewatch this video, the more I’m convinced it’s the retro male version and inspiration for Beyoncé and Shakira’s “Beautiful Liar.”)

The final product of all this is the music-video-within-the-video, where our tag team against easy lovin’ performs on stage in suits straight out of the era.  What is happening with Bailey’s pink lamé tie?  (Lamé is just lame without the fancy accent.) And why is Collins wearing sneakers with his suit?  Surely at this point in his career he could afford to invest in something a bit swankier.  I guess they spent most of the video’s budget on the heliocopter ride over London that starts the video.  Cause anyone who’s taken (or tried to take) a helicopter ride knows that that experience is not cheap – or easy.