Amused to Death
Amused to Death is the third studio album by English musician Roger Waters, released 7 September 1992 on Columbia. Produced by Waters and Patrick Leonard, it was mixed in QSound to enhance its spatial feel. The album features Jeff Beck on lead guitar on several tracks. The album's title was inspired by Neil Postman's 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death.
Not to be confused with Amusing Ourselves to Death.Amused to Death
7 September 1992
1987–1992
The Billiard Room (London)
Olympic Studios (London)
CTS Studios (London)
Angel Recording Studios (London)
Abbey Road Studios (London)
Compass Point Studios (Nassau)
Ameraycan Studios (Los Angeles)
Johnny Yuma Recording (Burbank)
Devonshire Sound Studios (Los Angeles)
72:36
- Patrick Leonard
- Roger Waters
In 2015, the album was remastered and re-released with new artwork and in different formats, including a new 5.1 surround sound mix by original engineer James Guthrie, assisted by Joel Plante.
Background and production[edit]
Roger Waters started working on Amused to Death in 1987 when he first wrote "Perfect Sense."[1] It was several years before the album was released.
Amused to Death was produced by Patrick Leonard, Waters, and was co-produced with Nick Griffiths in London at The Billiard Room, Olympic Studios, CTS Studios, Angel Recording Studios and Abbey Road Studios. The album was engineered by Hayden Bendall, Jerry Jordan, and Stephen McLaughlan and mixed by James Guthrie.[2] The album is mixed in QSound to enhance the spatial feel of the audio, and the many sound effects on the album – rifle range ambience, sleigh-bells, cars, planes, distant horses, chirping crickets, and dogs – all make use of the 3-D facility.
Amused to Death is the only studio album by Waters to not have a tour supporting it, though some songs were performed during the In The Flesh[3] and Us + Them tours,[4] and "The Bravery of Being Out of Range" was performed on the This Is Not A Drill tour.[5]
Packaging[edit]
The album's original artwork features a chimpanzee watching television in reference to Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey.[20] The image on the TV is a gigantic eyeball staring at the viewer.[20] According to Waters, the ape was "a symbol for anyone who's been sitting with his mouth open in front of the network and cable news for the last 10 years."[1]
Legacy[edit]
Waters told Classic Rock: "My view is that I've been involved in two absolutely classic albums – The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall [...] And if you haven't got Amused to Death, you haven't got the full set. So this album – the live one, which pulls together songs from all three albums – hopefully redresses the balance." On 19 September 2013, Waters told BBC HardTalk that Amused to Death has been completely underrated.[32][33]
On 15 April 2015, Waters announced that the album would be remastered and reissued on 24 July 2015 featuring a new 5.1 multichannel audio mix, as well as a new stereo mix. It was made available in a number of formats, including CD, SACD, Blu-ray and high-resolution downloads.[34] In a review of the 2015 remastering of the album, journalist J.C. Maçek III of Spectrum Culture wrote that "Not every album can be a masterpiece, but Waters has stated that Amused to Death is an underrated effort that serves as a third part to Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. But it's nowhere near those other albums. The 2015 remastering makes it a good sounding album, but it's just not the kind of infinitely listenable album that Waters is capable of creating."[30] In its review of the 2015 reissue, PopMatters wrote: "not only has Amused to Death aged well musically, it has unfortunately aged well thematically too. [...] Amused to Death was and still is a powerful statement from one of rock music's most literate misanthropes. As time goes on, it gets harder and harder to believe that it slipped under everyone's radar so thoroughly."[27] Drowned in Sound wrote: "Amused to Death stands up on its own as one of the better, more intriguing post-Floyd records".[23]
In 2016 Amused to Death won the Grammy Award for Best Surround Sound Album at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards. The winners were listed as follows:
"James Guthrie, surround mix engineer; James Guthrie & Joel Plante, surround mastering engineers; James Guthrie, surround producer (Roger Waters)
Label: Columbia/Legacy"
Commercial performance[edit]
Amused to Death reached No. 8 on the UK Albums Chart, Waters' first Top 10 as a solo artist in his homeland, and a career high of No. 21 on the Billboard 200, aided by "What God Wants, Part I", which hit No. 4 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks chart in 1992. It was also certified Silver by the British Phonographic Industry for sales of over 60,000 in the UK.[35]
Production