All Things Bright and Beautiful
In November 2009, Owl City’s Adam Young, a native and longtime resident of Owatonna, Minnesota (pop. 25,000), who had made his very first airplane journey only a year prior at age 22, found himself standing on the Great Wall of China. “I called my mom on my cell phone at 2 a.m. Minnesota time and said, ‘You’ll never believe where I am right now!’” Young recalls with a laugh. “I’m this shy kid from nowhere. My family didn’t have a lot of money to take vacations, so for me to have that kind of experience was surreal.”
It was just one of many extraordinary moments this unassuming 24-year-old Midwesterner would have over the past 18 months thanks to the blockbuster success of Owl City’s major-label debut album — the lush, lovingly created Ocean Eyes, which was released by Universal Republic Records in July 2009. Filled with whimsical melodies and blissful beats that Young conjured up alone in the basement of his parents’ home in Owatonna, Ocean Eyes topped the Billboard Rock, Alternative, and Dance/Electronic charts and was certified gold or platinum in nine countries, including platinum in the U.S. The album spawned the quadruple-platinum first single “Fireflies,” which was a No. 1 smash hit in 24 countries including the U.S. (where it hit the top spot twice), and sold more than four million downloads. Its eye-popping success has made Owl City an international phenomenon, selling nearly 12 million tracks worldwide and amassing an impressive touring record, including support stints with Maroon 5 and John Mayer, and sold-out headlining tours in which Young, backed by a five-piece band, performed for besotted fans in the U.S., Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.
Young’s adventures over the past two years are evocatively detailed on the impossibly catchy electro-pop songs that make up Owl City’s new album, All Things Bright and Beautiful. “Ocean Eyes was written from the perspective of my bedroom,” Young says. “All I could do was imagine how I’d feel if I could visit all these places I was writing about. This time around, I was influenced by very specific things and was able to draw upon what I’d been through, so that got poured into the lyrics and the moods of the songs. The music always dictates the lyrics. I just sit down at the piano and think about things and it happens in front of me.”
On All Things Bright and Beautiful, the music and lyrics conspire to make listeners feel as if they were stepping into another world — a verdant musical dreamland where “reality is a lovely place, but I wouldn’t want to live there,” as Young sings on the opening track “The Real World.” Images of abundance, like a backyard of butterflies (“Honey and the Bee”), blossoms filling a room (“Hospital Flowers”), and “sunsets that dazzle in the dusk” (“Dreams Don’t Turn To Dust”) unfold alongside starry-eyed imaginings of cherry bombs staining blackbirds red (“Kamikaze”) and dipping one’s toes in the galaxy (“Alligator Sky”).
