Virgin/Atlantic
Virgin/AtlanticBet Phil Collins didn’t feel this one coming: His classic 1981 hit “In the Air Tonight,” from his first solo album Face Value, is back on the charts after 39 years, thanks to a viral YouTube video showing a pair of twin brothers reacting to hearing the song for the first time.
As of Monday, the song was at #3 on the iTunes song sales chart, following “Beers and Sunshine” by Darius Rucker at #2 and “WAP” by Cardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion at #1.
Additionally, Variety reports that numbers provided by music analytics service Alpha Data show that “In the Air Tonight” was the fourth biggest-selling song of the week ending August 8, up from #185 the week prior.
Twenty-two-year-old brothers Tim and Fred Williams, whose channel is called “First Time Hearing,” posted their reaction video on July 27 and it’s since racked up over three million views.
There’s one particular part of the video got the most attention: The moment when the twins first hear Phil’s iconic “In the Air Tonight” drum break, which comes three minutes and 41 seconds into the song. Both of their jaws literally dropped when they heard it.
One of their previous videos reacting to Dolly Parton‘s “Jolene” also caught the Internet’s attention, with Dolly herself tweeting about it on August 7.
“No point in begging…Jolene already stole these two,” she wrote, referring to the song’s lyrics “Jolene, I’m begging of you/ Please don’t take my man.”
The brothers have also reacted to songs by Kansas, Lauryn Hill, Bruce Springsteen, Rage Against the Machine, The Carpenters, A-ha, The Allman Brothers Band, Marvin Gaye, Janis Joplin, Queens of the Stone Age and more.
By Andrea Dresdale
Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.