Academy Awards ceremony, Collins was not invited to sing his song on stage and instead sat in the audience as dancer Ann Reinking gave a mostly lip-synced vocal performance accompanied by a dance routine. Reinking's performance was poorly received by critics from the Los Angeles Times and People, as well as by Collins himself in a Rolling Stone interview. When another song Collins performed for a movie, "Separate Lives", was being nominated for an Academy Award, in interviews about the original snub by the academy for "Against All Odds", Collins would jokingly say "the hell with him - I'm going up too", referring to what he would do if the Stephen Bishop-written song were to win the award. Collins lost to the Stevie Wonder song "I Just Called to Say I Love You". Rapper RZA named "Against All Odds" as his favourite power ballad in an article on such songs in Spin. The Guardian and American Songwriter both named "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)" as Collins' second-best solo song behind "In the Air Tonight". Commercial performance "Against All Odds" became Collins' third top-ten single in the UK, peaking at #2 for three weeks in 1984. It was kept from the top spot by Lionel Richie's "Hello" for the first of these three weeks, and Duran Duran's "The Reflex" for the next two. It was ranked 14th in the year-end best-seller chart. In the U.S. and Canada, it peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and RPM charts for three weeks in the spring of 1984. Billboard ranked it as the No. 5 song for 1984. Music video The single's music video was directed by Taylor Hackford, produced by Jeffrey Abelson through Parallax Productions and cinematographed by Daniel Pearl. Hackford was paid US$20,000 (out of a total budget of US$45,000) for a complete Collins clip. The music video was released in February 1984. A No. 1 MTV video for several weeks, MTV ranked it as No. 4 four in its 1984 year-end top 20 video countdown. Gary LeMel, music supervisor at Columbia, felt the music video on MTV increased Against All Odds box office takings by at least US$5 million. The concept for the video was created by Keith Williams, a Welsh-born writer who had already worked with Abelson on the video for "Dancin' With Myself" (Billy Idol), and who would go on to also