1981 Hit Named Greatest Drum Fill of All Time

It's perhaps the most recognizable drum fill of all time for listeners — and according to drum players, it's also the best one, to boot.

"In The Air Tonight," the soft rock classic with that iconic explosion of music at the midway point, may be Phil Collins' crowning achievement in his seven-decade musical career. Written in 1981, following the collapse of his marriage to Andrea Bertorelli, following an extensive international tour by Genesis. For Collins, that iconic sound came first — and then he attempted to add words later on to make sense of his feelings of isolation, bitterness, and exhaustion:

"'In The Air [Tonight]' was improvised. I remember it like yesterday," Collins told Sky. "I played a few chords - D minor - the saddest chord of all. I played all these things, and it sounded nice. Then I started singing, and that's what came out. I only wrote the words down later."

The song opted for raw emotion over rationality, with Collins still struggling decades later to decipher why — and how — the song came together at that decisive point of his life.

"I had to start writing some of this music that was inside me," he later recalled to Mix. "I was just fooling around. I got these chords that I liked, so I turned the mic on and started singing. The lyrics you hear are what I wrote spontaneously. That frightens me a bit, but I'm quite proud of the fact that I sang 99.9 percent of those lyrics spontaneously."

Voted on by Drumeoreaders, "In The Air Tonight" shot to the top of their list of iconic drum fills. As the results acknowledged, the simple, yet supernatural 16th note feel perfectly represents to non-drum players the power the instrument holds in making or breaking a song.

Perhaps perfectly encapsulated by Far Out Magazine, the music mag once said of its popularity and technical mastery, "If you ever want any proof that Phil Collins is one of the greatest drummers ever to grace God’s green earth, look no further than the track ‘In The Air Tonight’. That’s a classic tune most notable for its drum part, which doesn’t come in until over a minute into the track. To have a song that is recognisable for its drums but that doesn’t have drums present for nearly half of it is nothing short of a miracle."