Songfacts®:

• Phil Collins poached the Earth, Wind & Fire horn section (known as The Phenix Horns) for his 1981 solo hit "I Missed Again," so a few months later when he was working with Genesis on the Abacab album, he decided to use them again. "I thought, if we're going to reinvent ourselves, why not have horns on it? This is a song here that sounds like a funky, R&B thing, so let's put horns on it. So we did it, and people hated it."
  
  The song did turn off some of Genesis' fans who were accustomed to their prog-rock sound. It's one of the Genesis songs that sounds like it could be a Phil Collins solo cut.
• In the song, Phil Collins sings about being frustrated and feeling ignored by his partner, who he thinks is hiding something from him. Collins poured his heart out on his solo Face Value album and could certainly related to these emotions, but he has never described this as a personal song for him - he was writing in character with a touch of paranoia, but with nowhere near the delusional tone of "Mama."
• Even after paring down to three members in 1977, Genesis rarely used outside musicians on their recordings. They didn't have have to because Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford could generate just about any sound using guitars, basses, keyboards and an array of samplers and synths. This song is an outlier in their catalog because of the horn section; the last time they used outside musicians was on their first album, From Genesis to Revelation, issued in 1969, which used a string section.
• In America, where the Earth, Wind & Fire sound was most effective, this was the first single from the album. Released in September 1981, it was the first new Genesis song to land on MTV, which went on the air in August. The video shows the band performing in an empty studio, which was pretty standard at the time. Genesis didn't dress for MTV - they looked more like accountants - but they did put on matching jackets and ham it up to mime the horn parts, which created a memorable visual interlude.
  
  MTV exposure helped send the song to #29 in November and gave them a new, younger audience who only knew them as a 3-piece pop band. For the rest of their run, they made more complex concept videos, many of which went over very well on MTV and helped grow their new American fanbase.
• In their native UK, this wasn't released as a single; it was issued in a number of European countries, including Italy and Portugal.
• The Beatles, who were a huge influence on Genesis, released a song with a similar lyrical sentiment in 1964: "No Reply."