Everything to Everyone

Barenaked Ladies | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 21, 2003)
• Original Release Date: 2003
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Reprise / Wea
• ASIN: B0000CC6QC
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (166 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #130,728 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

From its tongue-in-cheek cover art on down, Barenaked Ladies’s Everything to Everyone is a surprisingly tough-minded survey of early 21st-century culture. Often accused of being too clever for their own good, Toronto’s Ladies here provide a good deal of subtlety along with the expected tunefulness and genre-hopping. "Testing 1,2,3" is a complex song about nostalgia, singing in a rock & roll band that’s loved for perhaps narrow reasons, and watching one’s ex-girlfriend find a new lover. "Maybe Katie" presents two different views of the male fear of commitment before dropping a key bit of information about its title subject. And "Shopping" is a fist-in-velvet-glove tune in the tradition of the Housemartins’s "Happy Hour;" could its happy-go-lucky chorus be a skewering of George W. Bush’s pro-commerce response to Sept. 11? At the very least, it demonstrates that these guys fully understand the art and the implications of being all things to all people. --Rickey Wright

Product Description

Track Listing 1. Celebrity 2. Maybe Katie 3. Another Postcard 4. Next Time 5. For You 6. Shopping 7. Testing 1,2,3 8. Upside Down 9. War on Drugs 10. Aluminum 11. Unfinished 12. Second Best 13. Take It Outside 14. Have You Seen My Love? Details Producer: Ron Aniello Distributor: WEA (Distributor) Recording Type: Studio Recording Mode: Stereo SPAR Code: n/a Album Notes Barenaked Ladies: Kevin Hearn (vocals, acoustic & electric guitar, mandolin, accordion, piano, organ, keyboards, vibraphone, saw); Ed Robertson, Steven Page (vocals, acoustic & electric guitar); Jim Creegan (vocals, double-acoustic bass, electric bass); Tyler Stewart (vocals, drums, percussion). Additional personnel includes: Blue Man Group (percussion). Recorded at Royaltone Studios, North Hollywood, California between April & June 2003.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The past'll be presented, recast and reinvented..", December 23, 2004

By 

spiral_mind (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everything to Everyone (Audio CD)

You could almost say that a pop band over a decade old has no right to be releasing such a strong and [shudder] mature album as Everything to Everyone. Or you could just be glad they're still capable of doing what they do so well. After all it's only a small step from silly to cartoonish, or witty to overblown, or sugary/catchy to fluffy. BNL have assembled one of the most impressive pop catalogues around not only by having a knack for funny radio-friendly singalongs, but by usually walking that line without tipping too far to the wrong side. The lyrics are clever and often humorous, but only cross into self-parody if it's intentional. They can be serious and they can be wacky.. but most of all they can laugh at themselves right along with the rest of us.

After their last two offerings Maroon and Stunt (which are also mostly strong picks) the Ladies put a good helping of time and effort into E2E, and it shows. The result is that intriguing rarity: a strong pop record that benefits from being grown over time with good attention to detail. It's got enough hooks and irresistible choruses that it'll snag your ears right away, but there's a freshness & staying power underneath the hummability. The usual goofiness that's been a BNL trademark since "If I Had $1000000" coexists nicely with the likes of "War on Drugs" and "Have You Seen My Love," which are lovely ballads almost as simple and honest as you could ask for.. a skillful balance that only the best pop (think Ben Folds or Kevin Gilbert) achieves.

The sound is nicely varied without losing the sense of fun. "Another Postcard" is a semi-fast chant that's almost half rap (all the more silly considering that such lyrics aren't usually about, say, chimps in swimsuits). "Upside Down" is driven by a sinuous middle-eastern melody on accordion, which would be nutty enough to fit the absurdist lyrics even if they didn't toss in some screwy odd time changes. "For You" has a tinge of country; "Next Time" would almost be a sweet 60s-style waltz if the words weren't so cynical; "Shopping" shoots directly for the realm of mindless synth/techno and then overshoots, becoming something even more ridiculous. And for that song it's precisely what belongs.

Any one of their last three offerings is a great choice, whether you're new to the band or not, but I say this is the pick of the bunch. Who knew maturity could still be so much fun?

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars At Long Last!, November 1, 2003

By 

Mark Holt (Syracuse, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everything to Everyone (CD & Dvd-A) (Coll) (Audio CD)

I must admit, I thought there would never be a great Barenaked Ladies album again. After the wildly popular, but mostly soulless and derivative "Stunt" and the better, but not terribly interesting "Maroon" it had looked increasingly like it was time to play Taps for what had been, in this reviewer's opinion, the best band of the 1990s. I bought this new album with great trepidation, expecting to be disappointed yet again, and have been listening to it constantly ever since. The 14 tracks on this new album represent everything that is truly great about this band: Witty, and yet sometimes strangely touching, lyrics. Tight vocal harmonies. Completely effotless swings between the wildly frenetic and the slow, nostalgic balladeering that is, at once, both out of place for a pop band, and somehow perfect for this one. And underneath it all, a core of rock solid musical integrity. Steven Page's voice is the best in the business and it is a deep pleasure to hear him using it to its full potential again. "Everything to Everyone" is BNL's best work since "Born on A Pirate Ship" and over time I will probably come to regard it as better, for I think there are fewer poor songs on this new album than there were on that uneven masterpiece. It will never rival their 2 truly great contributions "Gordon" and "Maybe You Should Drive" but it is still one of the best albums of the year and a great relief to the true Barenaked Ladies Fan.
A note: Buy the special version with the DVD. It is worth the money. A bonus song, the entire album mixed in Dolby 5.1, interview segments, and a great acoustic concert where BNL premiered 11 of its new tracks in front of a very small audience in the recording studio. Some of those versions are better than the album versions, and showcase why the Ladies are one of the best live bands out there.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yeah, I love it., October 27, 2003

By 

Buzzipper "Buzzy" (Winterport, ME United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everything to Everyone (Audio CD)

I didn't expect to like this CD as much as Maroon, which I thought was a terrific album, especially in the wake of the commercial onslaught of Stunt. And I didn't expect to like this CD as much as Born on a Pirate Ship, which has always been my favorite BnL album, as it was the first one I bought and the one I cut my teeth on. Now, of course, I have all their albums, including the live one and the greatest hits package. So I sat down with my copy of the NEW BnL, with a plate full of high expectations, and a half-hearted smile, not daring to love it too much, not daring to laugh at it too much. But after listening to it, I'm quite sure that they've made their best album, maybe not because it's all brand new and wild like Gordon, or subdued and solemn like Maybe You Should Drive, or as experimental and eclectic as Pirate Ship, or as commercial as anything since, but because, I think, they are finally making music that is based on everything they've done, with the satisfactory smirk that says now they can do whatever they want. Can't wait until the next greatest hits package. I think they'll be around long enough to warrant a boxed set.