Robot might have put “Take Me Home” in its proper context for the first time. While “Take Me Home” has been interpreted as a song sung from the perspective of a man in a mental health facility, the popular video, which spun several times per day in MTV’s regular rotation in the mid-’80s, is a lighthearted travelogue, following a Hawaiian-shirted Collins as he flits from continent to continent on the No Jacket Required tour. Of capitalism? Of his own perilous grip on sanity? Do tell, Phil.
Again, Collins acts as a howling Greek chorus at the scene’s emotional climax: “I’ve been prisoner all my life,” he sings. As the scene plays out over several tense minutes, “Take Me Home”-one of four smash singles from Collins’s most popular solo album, 1985’s 25 million–selling No Jacket Required-is brought up in the mix. Soon, he will be instructed to take the money out of the bag and set it on fire, while dozens of stunned New Yorkers look on. Robot, an executive from E Corp stands on a busy Manhattan sidewalk with two large duffel bags loaded with cash. The Assassination of Gianni Versace made me think about another ’10s prestige drama that used a Phil Collins song as an instrument of dread. Was that in “Easy Lover” from the beginning? As he plunges the blade into the duct tape covering the man’s mouth, finally allowing him to breathe, Collins’s screaming vocal lifts on the soundtrack: “ You’ll be down on your knees!” Whoa. At the scene’s climax, Cunanan straddles his would-be customer, raising the scissors above his head. The walls are closing in on Cunanan, but he will not be deterred from relishing his mayhem in the meantime.Īs for “Easy Lover,” The Assassination of Gianni Versace teases out the song’s dark subtext, and then completely reinvents it. Criss’s ecstatic arm-waving to this frothy pop tune, moving in time with Collins’s titanic drum beat, while his prey slowly suffocates, is both chilling and darkly comic. Setting aside the obvious logistical problems-why would Cunanan pack Bailey’s Chinese Wall CD for his cross-country crime spree, on the off chance that he would want to play it during an assault?-the song perfectly spotlights how the killer’s delusional megalomania fed his increasingly homicidal behavior. The appearance of “Easy Lover” in The Assassination of Gianni Versace reveals new layers to Cunanan as well as the song. Cunanan has decided to torture his would-be john with some duct tape, a pair of scissors, and “Easy Lover,” 1984’s hit duet that Collins performed and cowrote with Philip Bailey.
What the man doesn’t know is that Cunanan is a fugitive serial killer who will soon murder the world’s most famous fashion designer.
One of the most memorable scenes from The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, FX’s brilliant and underwatched 2018 miniseries, concerns Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) and a wealthy older man who thinks he has hired Cunanan to have sex with him in his Miami hotel room. He has instead been reimagined as music for monsters. These days, as he carries on with an extended farewell tour, Phil Collins is no longer a safe choice for dentist’s offices. If the middle of the road had an equator, it was Phil Collins.īut now, seemingly everything that once seemed innocuous back in the late 20th century has been given a Zack Snyder–style “gritty” reboot. A ubiquitous presence in ’80s and early-’90s pop culture, this balding, middle-aged white man mugged for the camera on MTV-with push-up blazer sleeves and the requisite mullet, like one of the era’s midlevel road comics-and sang about relationships, politics, and something called a “Sussudio.” He was absurdly normal. He was a pop star most people could agree on, whether it was your mother or Don Johnson.