Every now and then you hear a cover of a song you have known for years and for those few minutes you almost forget the original exists.
It doesn’t happen very often, especially when the song being covered is as iconic as Phil Collins’ ‘In the Air Tonight’, but watching ONEFOUR perform it for triple j’s Like A Version alongside Jimmy Barnes and Jessica Mauboy genuinely felt like that.
There are probably easier songs to cover than this one. ‘In the Air Tonight’ has been around for more than 45 years and there are parts of it that are so deeply ingrained in popular culture that even people who couldn’t name a Phil Collins album probably know exactly what is coming when they hear those opening sounds.
And then, of course, there is the drum fill.
But what I loved about this version is that ONEFOUR didn’t really seem interested in recreating the original just for the sake of paying tribute to it. They basically took the song apart and figured out what it could sound like if it belonged to them instead.
Before getting into why that works so well though, it is worth going back to the original, because the story behind ‘In the Air Tonight’ makes this version even more interesting.
Phil Collins wrote the song during one of the most difficult periods of his life. His first marriage was falling apart, Genesis had taken some time away from touring, and Collins suddenly found himself spending a lot more time at home. He started experimenting with a drum machine and a Prophet-5 synthesiser, eventually coming up with the foundations of what would become ‘In the Air Tonight’.
There have been all sorts of stories attached to the song since then. The most famous one is probably the urban legend that Collins witnessed someone drowning while another person refused to help, and then somehow tracked that person down years later and confronted them through the song.
It is a great story, but it is also completely made up.
Collins himself has spoken about how he doesn’t really know exactly what the song is about in a literal sense because a lot of the lyrics came from improvising while he was recording. What he does remember is what he was feeling at the time, and when you know what was happening in his life, suddenly the song makes a lot more sense.
There is anger in it, but it doesn’t explode straightaway. The music is sparse, Collins sounds almost distant at times and the whole song feels like it is slowly building towards something without telling you exactly when that something is going to arrive. Which is why that drum fill works as well as it does.
It is funny when you think about it because the most famous part of the song lasts only a few seconds. But those few seconds wouldn’t mean nearly as much without everything that happens before them.
And I think that is also part of what ONEFOUR understood so well with their version.
They didn’t need to keep every lyric or follow exactly what Collins did because that isn’t necessarily what makes the song special. Instead, they kept enough of its DNA that you immediately know what you are listening to and then started building their own song around it.
J Emz, Spenny and Celly write their own verses rather than performing Collins’ original ones, and that completely changes the relationship they have with the song. They aren’t rappers who have been invited onto a Phil Collins cover to give it a modern section somewhere in the middle. For large parts of the performance, it genuinely feels like a ONEFOUR song.
Then the chorus arrives and suddenly you remember exactly where all of this came from.
Jessica Mauboy sounds incredible on it, Jimmy Barnes brings a completely different weight to the record, and somehow none of these different musical worlds feel like they are fighting each other.
You have one of the defining voices of Australian rock, one of Australia’s biggest pop and R&B singers and a group from Mount Druitt who helped put Australian drill in front of an international audience, all meeting inside a song written by Phil Collins in England more than four decades ago.
On paper, that sounds like someone has just thrown four completely different musical worlds together to see what happens.
Jimmy Barnes spoke to triple j about that connection as well, saying that they came from similar backgrounds and had both had to fight to make themselves heard. That feels particularly relevant when ONEFOUR are involved because their journey in Australian music has been anything but straightforward.
For years, they became almost as well known for the shows they weren’t allowed to play as the music they were making. Police pressure and venue cancellations followed them while their music continued travelling around Australia and overseas, and somehow a group that had become one of Australia’s most recognisable rap exports struggled to simply perform in their own city.
That context makes seeing them here feel significant in a way that goes beyond whether the cover sounds good.
Here they are on Like A Version, one of Australian music’s biggest platforms, standing alongside Jimmy Barnes and Jessica Mauboy and taking one of the most recognisable songs of the last 50 years and reshaping it around the music they make.
And maybe that is also why this version made me think about what actually makes a great cover.
Johnny Cash didn’t make ‘Hurt’ memorable because he sounded like Trent Reznor. Jimi Hendrix didn’t turn ‘All Along the Watchtower’ into one of the most famous covers ever by trying to sound like Bob Dylan. They found something inside those songs that made sense for who they were and took them somewhere else.
Obviously I am not saying one Like A Version suddenly belongs in that conversation historically, but the same idea is there.
ONEFOUR could have rapped Phil Collins’ words. They could have kept most of the arrangement, added a verse and made a very good version of ‘In the Air Tonight’.
Instead, they kept what they needed and changed almost everything else. And somehow that makes the original feel more present rather than less.
Maybe that is what I loved most about this version. It never felt like they were trying to remind us how great ‘In the Air Tonight’ is. We already know that. The song has had more than four decades to establish that.
They gave us a reason to hear it differently.
And for a song that has been heard, covered, referenced and replayed as many times as ‘In the Air Tonight’ has, that might be the hardest thing a cover can do.