Why is Peter Gabriel a much better solo artist than Phil Collins?
Peter Gabriel is incredibly talented and made creative music. Phil Collins went the pop star route.
Peter Gabriel has an artistic integrity that Phil Collins hasn’t got.
If you look at Gabriel’s most Pop album So it’s still got challenging material on it and for a long period he churned out many albums of challenging music and championed other artists who were doing the same.
Phil Collins has produced some memorable and musically interesting tracks which are on a par with some of Peter Gabriel’s best work but it’s scattered in with very light weight material and political naive singles, reports of tax avoidance and Conservative party support may be exaggerated and how he spends his millions is not information I have access to but a song like this one : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt2mbGP6vFI is hard to square with certain confirmed aspects of his life. It’s also structurally a lousy song terrible structure, awful pararhymes etc
When Gabriel makes a political song it’s usually backed up with political action and awareness and fund raising. The song tends to be better too. To their credit even Sting (voice sandpapers any melody) and Bono back up any political message they have with some sort of affirmative action. The song isn’t everything.