I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning

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Professional reviews
I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning

Studio album by Bright Eyes
Released	January 25, 2005
Recorded	February 2004: Presto! Recording Studios - Lincoln, Nebraska
Genre	Folk
Length	45:41
Label	Saddle Creek LBJ-72
Producer(s)	Mike Mogis
Allmusic link Rolling Stone link Robert Christgau (A-) link The Music Box link Pitchfork Media (8.7/10) link PopMatters (8/10) link Planet Sound (9/10)
Bright Eyes chronology
A Christmas Album (2002)	I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning / Digital Ash in a Digital Urn (2005)	Motion Sickness (2005)

I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning is one of two Bright Eyes albums (along with Digital Ash in a Digital Urn) released on January 25, 2005, by Saddle Creek Records.

This album is the 72nd release of Saddle Creek Records.

1 Songs
2 Critical response
3 Track listing
4 Personnel
5 References

[edit] Songs

Like the two Bright Eyes albums before it, I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning opens with a long dialog, this time by Conor Oberst himself. The monologue is a bizarre short story about two strangers on an airplane that is about to fall into the ocean. One of the characters is manically cheerful in spite of the situation and begins singing the song, "At the Bottom of Everything," which kicks the album off. The simple, three-chord folk song is one of Oberst's trademark sarcastic social commentaries on American ideals, such as the pursuit of capitalistic success: "We must blend into the choir, singing static with the whole. We must memorize nine numbers and deny we have a soul. And in this race for property and privilege to be won, we must run, we must run, we must run." It made its television debut on the April 30, 2004 episode of Late Late Show, on which the short story was replaced with a dedication to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and President George W. Bush: "Two men I admire a lot," declared Oberst, "for their biceps and for their creepy, fascist agendas." The conclusion of the story during the bridge was replaced by Oberst shouting "M. Ward for president!" A music video directed by Cat Solen and starring Evan Rachel Wood and Terence Stamp was later made for the song, based on the story in its introduction, which remained intact.

The single for "Lua" reached #1 on the U.S. charts.

The music video for "First Day of My Life" was directed by John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch).

[edit] Critical response

I'm Wide Awake It's Morning received mostly positive reviews from music critics around the country. It was placed in the following 'best of' lists for the year 2005:

Critc/Publication	Rank
Amazon.com's Top 100 Editor's Picks [1]	79
metacritic.com [2]	15
Rolling Stone [3]	8
Planet Sound	1
Time [4]	10
Spin [5]	21
Blender [6]	4

These opinions were not quite unanimous. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of All Music Guide criticized Oberst's "heavy-handed pretension in the words and [...] affectedness in his delivery," calling the album proof that "instead of reaching musical maturity, he's wallowing in a perpetual adolescence." A negative review from Keith Harris of The Village Voice also found the record to be "a mess, and not just sonically."