Songfacts®:

• While on its surface this sounds like just another lament for a love lost, Phil Collins actually wrote it in response to the accidental death of the 4-year-old son of his longtime friend and occasional musical collaborator Eric Clapton (an event which also inspired two better-known songs by Clapton himself, "Tears In Heaven" and "Circus"). Officially the song is credited to all three band members, as are all the other songs on the We Can't Dance album.
• Together with "Fading Lights" (the track that follows "Since I Lost You" and closes the album), this song is also often seen as prescient of Genesis's own fate as a band. We Can't Dance turned out to be the last of Collins' 12 studio albums with Genesis (eight as their frontman), although he would not officially part ways with Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford until 1996. Banks and Rutherford would record one more album as Genesis, 1997's Calling All Stations, with Scotsman Ray Wilson replacing Collins on lead vocals. That album failed to live up to Genesis' usual standards, prompting Wilson's departure and an "indefinite hiatus" for the band, although there have since been on-again, off-again rumblings of a Genesis reunion tour featuring Collins and possibly even former band mates Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett. >>>

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