A Present for Everyone
A Present for Everyone is the second studio album by English pop punk band Busted. It was released on 17 November 2003 by Universal Island Records and features a sound mixing pop punk and power pop material with traditional pop rock. Five singles were released from the album, including the number-one hits "Crashed the Wedding", "Who's David" and "Thunderbirds / 3AM".
A Present for Everyone
The album received generally positive reviews from music critics. It debuted and peaked at number 2 on the UK Albums Chart and has been certified 3× Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry for sales of over 900,000.[5] A Present for Everyone was Busted's final album until they reformed in 2015 and released their third album Night Driver.
Background[edit]
The album was originally intended to be titled Drum Roll, and was referred to as such in press releases and interviews up until October of that year. Matt Willis said in an interview on Popworld that it was called A Present for Everyone because "it is actually a present for - everyone".[6] The album showed a more mature sound compared to their debut album. Eight of the thirteen standard edition tracks were co-written with Tom Fletcher from McFly, a band which Bourne helped form following Fletcher's departure from Busted in the early days of the band. "She Wants to Be Me" and "3am" were co-written with production team The Matrix, which showed a slight departure in sound for the band, venturing more into pop punk.
"Fake" and "Better Than This" were collaborations between Willis, Guy Chambers and Steve Power, and both were hailed as stand-out tracks on the album in critical reviews. Bourne and Neve guitarist Michael Raphael wrote "Can't Break Thru", while Simpson co-wrote "Why" with his brother Will. "Why" shows a much heavier rock sound, similar to that of Simpson's future project Fightstar, for which he later left Busted to commit to full-time. Simpson later hailed "Why" as his favourite Busted song of all time. "Better Than This", "Why" and "Can't Break Thru" have solo vocal performances from those who wrote them.
The fifth and final single was "She Wants to Be Me", which was released in November 2004 as a 3" CD. It was banned from charting, however, as the Official Charts Company's then-rules prevented songs of that format from charting.
Chart performance[edit]
Despite being highly anticipated, the album debuted at number two on the UK Albums Chart. It was held off the top spot by Michael Jackson's greatest hits album, Number Ones,[18] with the latter winning out by less than 600 copies.[19] A Present for Everyone was the 19th best-selling album of 2003 in the UK,[20] and has been certified 3× Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for sales of over 900,000. It has sold over 1,000,000 copies to date.[21]
Musicians
Production