Track Listing

1. Exit Stage Right
2. A Peak You Reach
3. Something To talk About
4. Dead Duck
5. Above You, Below Me
6. I love N.Y.E.
7. Silent Sigh
8. Wet, Wet, Wet
9. River-Sea-Ocean
10. S.P.A.T.
11. Rachel’s Flat
12. Walking Out Of Stride
13. File Me Away
14. A Minor Incident
15. Delta (Little Boy Blues)
16. Donna and Blitzen

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6858 in Music
• Released on: 2002-04-08
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Soundtrack
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .24 pounds
• Running time: 101 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
For a man frequently stereotyped as shambolic and perverse, Badly Drawn Boy moves with unusual grace. On About A Boy, he pulls off something truly rare--a coherent soundtrack album, and one that's much more than a mere adjunct to the Nick Hornby/Hugh Grant masculinity-in-crisis blockbuster. Of 16 tracks, seven are instrumental passages that mostly realise Damon Gough's penchant for pretty orchestral reveries. The other nine, meanwhile, are fully formed new Badly Drawn Boy songs, rarely straying far from the templates set on The Hour Of The Bewilderbeast.

Raw materials remain loose, circling, faintly jazzy strums and broken-backed pianos, topped with those airy vocals that err just on the right side of distracted. But Damon Gough's gift is to conjure up an air of innocence, however disingenuous that may be, and make his way with a melody seem uncommonly fresh. So "Above You, Below Me" transcends its rickety, waltzing similarity to "Once Around The Block", while the outstanding "Something To Talk About" is like "Pissing In The Wind" reshaped by Elliott Smith (no coincidence that Smith cohort Tom Rothrock coproduces here). There's even a lovely Christmas song, "Donna & Blitzen", to round things off. The old quibbles about musicians tossing away good songs on soon-forgotten soundtracks seem irrelevant. Best treat About A Boy as a proper album--Damon Gough certainly did. --John Mulvey

CD Description
'About A Boy' is the follow up to Badly Drawn Boy's debut album 'The Hour Of Bewilderbeast', which was released in 2000, and is also the soundtrack to the film adaption of Nick Hornby's book of the same name. Resolutely an indie album withpop elements, much the same as his debut, full of acoustic guitars, samples and brass accompaniment.

Customer Reviews

Something to talk about!!!!
Wow, what a fantastic album this is. Badly drawn boy has gracefully moved on from the brilliant 'hour of...' and now produces this, an amazing soundtrack for a fantastic film.
When i first listened to this album i was travelling on a bus and i was overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of both the music and the countryside. It is deffinatly a Summer/Autumn album which makes you appreciate the world.

The track 'I love NYE' is brilliant. Its a peice of instrumental genious which made me want to cry. All the tracks are outstanding, especially Something to talkabout, which was the reason i bought this cd in the first place.

Other tracks that i like are the instrumental Wet,wet,wet Dead Duck and the short and sweet exit stage right. The other vocal tracks i like are Silent sigh, file me away and river sea ocean.

I have to recommend you buy this CD, its a great chill out cd and is a fantastic collection of songs. Buy it buy it BUY IT!!!!!!

Badly Drawn, but definitely not Badly Written!
After enjoying the film I hurried out to purchase a copy of the soundtrack. A quick listen to the CD at a listening post at the shop confirmed what I already expected... that this was an excellent album.

Combining both instrumental and vocal pieces, the essence of the film is perfectly embodied, often provoking the listener to think back to certain parts of the movie. From the thirty second long 'Exit Stage Right' to the beautifully evocative 'I Love Nye', each song has a charming character of its own. My personal favourite is 'Silent Sigh', in my opinion the most representative of the film and soundtrack as a whole.

My only quibble, albeit very minor, is that unlike other film soundtracks that I own the tracks are not arranged in the order in which they appear in the film. This is not really a problem though, and the order in which they have been placed works well.

Definitely worth buying - it's great as background music or just to listen to more loudly.

Mellow Madness
When placing the About a Boy soundtrack into my CD player I was expecting something good, and yet was still astonished by how good it really was. An incredibly relaxing album, this OST has a mixture of songs and small pieces of calm and relaxing music. Personal favourites include Silent Sigh, Something to talk About, and A Peak You reach. This album is inspiring and really helps you get into the Summer mood.