[10][11] After his first wife filed for divorce in 1979, Collins began to write songs during a break in activity from Genesis with much of the material concerning his personal life.

The album received widespread praise from critics and launched Collins' solo career whose commercial success would ultimately outstrip that of Genesis.

After spending the first five as their drummer, he reluctantly accepted the role of frontman of the group in 1975 following the departure of the band's original singer, Peter Gabriel.

[13][16] With Genesis members Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford working on their solo albums through 1979, Collins used some of his spare time to write songs.

There were numerous times where Collins stopped recording earlier than planned as the ideas were not working in the studio, leaving him to resume the following day.

[19] During the conception of the album, Collins had forged a close friendship with John Martyn and contributed towards Grace and Danger (1980), which contained a similar narrative relating to divorce and relationship breakdown.

Initially he considered George Clinton, Maurice White, or Phil Ramone until he realised that he merely wanted someone to endorse his own ideas.

While technically a rock and pop offering, the basis of many of the tracks lies in R&B with light funk influences, especially in "I'm Not Moving", for which Collins sang his backgrounds with a vocoder.

[22] Collins regarded Face Value as a highly personal project, which gave rise to the iconic cover art with Collins' face in extreme close-up, originally intended to symbolise the listener "getting into his head"; the reverse side of the sleeve shows the rear of his head, although the CD version of the album placed this image on the insert card instead.

To emphasise the personal nature of the album, Collins also hand wrote all of the liner and sleeve notes, even down to the legal statements on the outer circumference of the centre label of the disc itself.

Both of the main visual elements of Face Value – the facial close-up, and the handwritten notes – would become a motif of Collins' subsequent albums until 1996's Dance into the Light.

[27] In Sounds, Hugh Fielder said that it effectively captured Collins' "multi-faceted" musicality with songs ranging "from funky beat to melancholic ballads with occasional pop and avant garde twinges.

"[30] Melody Maker's Allan Jones considered Face Value a compelling stylistic divergence from Collins' work in Genesis, writing that the album "delights in confounding the familiar parameters" of the band's music.

He complimented Collins for forgoing Genesis' "high-blown conceits" for a simpler sound rooted in "basic pop and R&B", but found that "[his] broken heart is too clearly on his sleeve, and musical missteps abound".

[33] In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Tim Sendra described Face Value as "Collins' most honest, most compelling work", which "stands as his masterpiece and one of the finest moments of the '80s musical landscape.

"[2] Writing for Ultimate Classic Rock in 2013, Will Levith called it a "now-classic" album, highlighting in particular "In the Air Tonight", "which just about everybody has played air drums to one time or another", but added, "The project's most forgettable moment, however, is the closing track – an absolutely atrocious cover of 'Tomorrow Never Knows' [...] Why Collins thought it was necessary to lay such a giant turd on an otherwise awesome album is beyond us.

"[34] Reviewing the album's 2016 reissue, Uncut's Sharon O'Connell said that Face Value established Collins as a "premier-league" pop and soft rock performer, "nursing only a slight prog hangover",[31] and Mojo's Paul Elliott wrote that it remained Collins' best solo record, noting its deeply personal core themes.

[24] Dorset Echo writer Joanna Davis said, "Most of the tracks stand the test of time, but some, like 'If Leaving Me is Easy', belong in the forgotten land of 80s ballads preceded by a saxophone introduction.

"[35] Dorian Lynskey of The Guardian characterised the album in 2016 as "an intriguing debut, wandering between art-rock and soulful MOR... Face Value's most potent quality was its emotional transparency.