Belying his status as a narcoleptic slacker icon,
Badly Drawn Boy proved himself a tireless pop songwriter, with arrangements that reflect a great deal of creativity. Born Damon Gough, he began recording after meeting the like-minded
Andy Votel at a Manchester nightclub. The pair formed the Twisted Nerve label, and Gough debuted as
Badly Drawn Boy with an EP and several singles.
The recordings dovetailed nicely with the experimentalist pop fringe of artists like Scott 4 and
the Beta Band, and the attendant media hype allowed him to guest alongside
Thom Yorke,
Richard Ashcroft, and
Mike D on 1997's celebrity-filled
UNKLE LP
Psyence Fiction. His 1999 single "Once Around the Block" grazed the British charts, while XL Recordings signed the pop auteur and released his debut album,
The Hour of Bewilderbeast, in 2000. Just before its American release, the album earned another round of critical praise with Britain's vaunted Mercury Prize for Best Album. December 2000 brought the birth of his daughter. Author Nick Hornby was won over by his music and asked the singer to score the film being made of his book About a Boy. After that project, he moved away from music for a few months to work on new material. After recording during most of 2002, he emerged that fall with
Have You Fed the Fish? Two years later, Gough resurfaced with the simpler
One Plus One Is One.
Born in the U.K., a poppier collection of songs inspired by his childhood and (as the title suggests)
Bruce Springsteen's
Born in the U.S.A., arrived in fall 2006. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide
