You're not just imagining it: the 1980s are back! It's not just Netflix drowning us in nostalgia with Stranger Things and Fuller House. Women are wearing scrunchies, Ghostbusters and Blade Runner are returning to the multiplex, Hulk Hogan is back showing off his moves on videotape, and Teddy Ruxpin is returning to toy stores. Just for fun, we even elected a 1980s curio as President of the United States! But is everything we remember about the eighties the totally tubular truth? "Just say no," says Jeopardy!'s Ken Jennings, so we've asked him to take us on a DeLorean ride back in time, separating the "Straight Up" facts from the "sweet little lies" of our foggily remembered Bartles & Jaymes youth. As they say, knowing is half the battle.
The Debunker: Is "In the Air Tonight" about Phil Collins Watching a Man Drown?
This rumor, in one of its dozens of variations, is so persistent that no less a scholar than Eminem cites it as fact in his hit "Stan":
About that guy who coulda saved that other guy from drownin'
But didn't, then Phil saw it all, then at a show he found him?
Marshall got the title wrong— Collins's first solo hit in 1981 was called "In the Air Tonight"n—but his retelling of the urban legend is pretty much correct (and rhymes!). Phil Collins's friend, according to most versions of the story, goes for a late-night swim and gets into trouble. A bystander could clearly have saved him, but refuses to help, so Phil has to watch his friend die. In the most bizarre version of the story, Phil gets revenge by tracking down the non-Samaritan, writing a song about his failure, and singing it in concert while a spotlight finds the man in the crowd. The man is arrested, or maybe goes home and hangs himself. This is the best version of the story, because it makes Phil Collins into a cunning detective, whose light adult-contemporary hits are secret snares for all the guilty hearts he can personally lure into his audiences. Like Hamlet!
There are even more baroque variations, like one in which the drowning man is (surprise twist!) the rapist of Collins's wife. This is all crazy, but it's not hard to see where it started. The song's lyrics are addressed to a man who did something terrible witnessed by the singer, something so terrible that "if you told me you were drowning, I would not lend a hand." But Collins himself says that listeners have been taking the song too literally: it's just about his acrimonious 1980 divorce from his first wife. "It's the angry side, or the bitter side, of a separation," he told the BBC. He blames American fans for creating the "drowning man" legend, saying, "Every time I go back to America, the story gets Chinese whispers [the British name for the game "telephone"], it gets more and more elaborate." So never fear, Phil Collins fans! You can attend his comeback tour next year without worrying that he's going to unravel your darkest secrets from the stage.
Quick Quiz: Collins's daughter Lily made her film debut playing the appropriately named Collins Tuohy, Sandra Bullock's character's daughter, in what 2009 movie?
Ken Jennings is the author of eleven books, most recently his Junior Genius Guides, Because I Said So!, and Maphead. He's also the proud owner of an underwhelming Bag o' Crap. Follow him at ken-jennings.com or on Twitter as @KenJennings.