Wonderland (McFly album)
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This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (July 2006) |
| Wonderland | |||||
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| Studio album by McFly | |||||
| Released | August 29, 2005 | ||||
| Genre | Pop , Pop Rock | ||||
| Length | 43:27 | ||||
| Label | Island Records | ||||
| Producer | Hugh Padgham | ||||
| Professional reviews | |||||
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| McFly chronology | |||||
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Wonderland is the second Number One album by the British pop band McFly, which is the follow up to their Number One selling album Room on the 3rd Floor. It was released in the UK on 29 August 2005. It was a success, selling over 300,000 copies in the UK and was certified Platinum, but has sold less than their debut.
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[edit] Track listing
- I'll Be OK – 3:24 - (Tom Fletcher, Danny Jones, Dougie Poynter)
- I've Got You – 3:18 - (Tom Fletcher, Danny Jones, Graham Gouldman)
- Ultraviolet – 3:56 - (Tom Fletcher, Danny Jones)
- The Ballad of Paul K - – 3:17 - (Tom Fletcher, Danny Jones, Dougie Poynter)
- I Wanna Hold You – 2:59 - (Tom Fletcher, Danny Jones, Dougie Poynter)
- Too Close for Comfort – 4:37 - (Tom Fletcher, Danny Jones, Dougie Poynter)
- All About You – 3:06 - (Tom Fletcher)
- She Falls Asleep [Part 1] – 1:43 - (Tom Fletcher)
- She Falls Asleep [Part 2] – 4:11 - (Tom Fletcher, Harry Judd, Dougie Poynter)
- Don't Know Why – 4:20 - (Danny Jones, Vicky Jones)
- Nothing – 3:50 - (Tom Fletcher, Danny Jones, Dougie Poynter)
- Memory Lane – 4:40 - (Tom Fletcher, James Bourne)
[edit] Album Facts
- It includes the Number One Comic Relief single, "All About You".
- The second track to be released from the album was "I'll Be OK", which was their fourth UK Number One.
- They recorded it in 48 hours.
- "Ultraviolet" was previously named "Summer Girls" and 'Wonderland' was found on the band's original demo tape.
- "Memory Lane" and "I've Got You" were leaked out on the Internet but they were demo versions and are different from the album edit.
- The Who's track "Substitute" is said to have influenced the track "Nothing".
- "I've Got You" was partly recorded in New Orleans.
- "The Ballad of Paul K" was inspired by Supertramp's song "Give a Little Bit". Paul K was someone who Dougie knew at school, although the song is not about him.
- Wonderland features a 60-piece Orchestra, which also played on The Wonderland Tour 2005.
- A Digipak of the album was made available - the album held in Limited Edition packaging.
- The third single from the album was 'I Wanna Hold You' and it was released in the UK on October 17, 2005. It reached number three in the charts
- The fourth single from the album was a double A-side Ultraviolet/The Ballad of Paul K, which was released December 12, 2005. It got to number nine in the UK charts, which was their worst chart position to date.
[edit] The Band's Commentary
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- I’ll Be OK
Danny: This actually started life as two songs – I’d written one, and Tom and written another. Mine had a bad verse and a good chorus, Tom’s had good verse and a really really, really bad chorus.
Tom: It wasn’t that bad.
Danny: So we put them together one morning when we were filming the movie [Just My Luck] in New Orleans, and the good verses worked with the good chorus. I guess this means that somewhere on the cutting room floor there’s this song’s mirror image, with really bad verses and a really bad chorus, It's how they made chicken nuggets you know.
- I’ve Got You
Harry: We began recording this in New Orleans. The whole vibe there was so chilled out that it brought out a different side of our playing. American production tends to be a lot brighter – there’s a different edge to it.
Danny: Tom and I wrote this with Graham Gouldman, who came up with the riff at the beginning and we built the rest of the song around it, then went away and wrote the lyrics separately.
Tom: It’s about standing by somebody no matter what – the line “if stars collide will you stand by and watch them fall” sums that up. It’s just about having someone to care about, be with and struggle with. The Who, again, are a big influence here – they’re the kings of amazing guitar riffs. For that reason we’ve kept the production very simple on this one, and it’s been a question across the whole album of keeping the songs as simple as possible.
- Ultraviolet
Tom: This was originally called ‘Summer Girls’ and was written a long time ago – we wrote a whole load all in one go and it got lost for a while as we played around with other songs. About a year later, when we were recording in the studio, I came across a CD of our home demo and it jumped out. It’s about how girls can change your world around…
Dougie: …in the summer…
Tom: …and how they can really screw with your head. In the first verse, the Miss Halloween who’s drinking at the bar in New Orleans is the summer girl who’s screwing your mind up. I think this is my favourite song – structurally, musically and lyrically – on the album.
Danny: There’s a sitar at the beginning and the end of this song. Tom stole the sitar off some bloke on the street.
Tom: I did nothing of the sort.
- The Ballad of Paul K
Tom: This song’s inspired, musically, by Supertramp’s ‘Give A Little Bit’, and it’s about our dads. Dads in general, really – but that specific point in their life when they go through a mid-life crisis, with his life falling down and he doesn’t have a clue what to do with himself. I’m not really looking forward to getting properly old.
Danny: From my point of view it’s a song about realising exactly how much your parents keep from you when things are tough, and when they’ve run out of money. There’s a line about struggling to pay for a new kitchen floor – which I can directly relate to. Obviously Harry’s family could afford as many kitchen floors as they wanted.
Harry: And they were heated.
Dougie: Paul K is a weirdo who went to my school – this Greek guy who never spoke and thought he was a dinosaur. Just one of those really, really weird guys. Of course the weirdest thing is that this song isn’t even about him…
- I Wanna Hold You
Danny: It’s probably early days to say ‘classic McFly’ but this is one of a few songs on ‘Wonderland’ to provide a good bridge between how we were two years ago and how we are now. We started writing this on our first tour – hotel rooms have proved great locations for songwriting.
Tom: It’s ironic that the song was started so early, because this ended up being one of the last songs to actually be recorded for ‘Wonderland’. I was literally writing the lyrics on the day we were doing the vocals - Danny was finishing the lyrics for the middle eight while I was recording my verse!
Danny: This is my only lead solo on the album. I wanted more, but there you go.
Tom: The strings were recorded on the same day we did the strings for ‘She Falls Asleep’. It’s cheaper if you do it all on one go.
- Too Close for Comfort
Dougie: Lyrically I think it’s probably the heaviest thing we’ve written.
Tom: It’s about getting close to a girl but feeling, the whole time, as if she’s keeping something back from you. In the song you’re driving her home for the last time, you’re telling her how you feel and you give her a letter which tells her everything you don’t have the words to say. In the end you find out all the lies… There’s a riff in one of the verses which was made using this thing called a Space Echo – this thing with loads of analogue tape wound up in it that records and then plays over itself, which made the riff sound absolutely huge.
- All About You
Tom: I originally wrote this as a Valentine’s Day present, for a girl, and that was miles before Comic Relief even came up so I never actually intended for anyone to hear it. She was very pleased with it.
Harry: Did you sing it to her?
Tom: No, I recorded it and gave her the CD.
Tom: So anyway, the song turned out really well and when Comic Relief came about the whole song’s meaning changed.
- She Falls Asleep
Harry: Epic is the word.
Tom: This was written over a year ago – and along with ‘All About You’ it was one of the first songs I wrote on the piano I got for the house. Over time it took on a life of its own. It’s about a girl who commits suicide – when she falls asleep it’s because she’s, well…
Dougie: Killed herself.
Tom: Yes. The song tells the story of her phoning her best friend up on the phone – he doesn’t know what to say to help her, so he races round to her house to sort her out but by the time he gets there she’s already dead. Originally the song was going to have drums and guitars coming in halfway through, but in the end we decided it should be all orchestra and piano. I’m a big fan of [film score composer] John Williams, and the introduction is very inspired by him.
- Don't Know Why
Danny: This is a song I wrote with my sister some time ago, and finished for this album. It’s about when you’re young and your mum and dad argue and you don’t want to hear it – and then later on, when they’re splitting up, you wish you’d taken notice and done something about it. It’s just about the shit you go through as a teenager – or at any age. There are a few of my different inspirations here. The line “dreams we had as kids fade away” reminds me of an old Oasis b-side, ‘Fade Away’, and the middle eight is inspired by a guy called Isaac Guillory. The end bit was influenced by the singer-songwriter Kelly Joe Phelps.
Tom: Your influences are so random! I’ve never even heard of half these people you bang on about!
Danny: It’s just the music I was brought up on!
- Nothing
Tom: It’s one of the songs where The Who spring to mind – not in terms of its sound, but I’d just learned how to play ‘Substitute’ on the guitar when I wrote the riff. I started writing it in a Jacuzzi in New Orleans, I had it going round in my head so I got out, dried myself down and went down to the river to finish it off. The line “I hope you will be happy, I hope you’re happy now” was inspired by Wicked, the musical, which we saw on Broadway when we were in New York and must be the best musical I’ve ever seen.
- Memory Lane
Tom: The only song on the album co-written with James Bourne – first recorded a very, very long time ago and actually one of the songs that was considered for the first album.
Danny: In the end it wasn’t finished in time so we’ve had the opportunity to look at it again for ‘Wonderland’ and the version we’ve got now is about a million times better than the one that was knocking around a couple of years ago.
[edit] References
[edit] See also
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