Gary Barlow released his new album ‘Music Played By Humans’ on Friday 27th November. His latest album is his first in over 7 years without boyband ‘Take That’ and is a big-band album mixing big-band jazz, latin and pop and features nine celebrity guests and an 80 piece orchestra. Gary shows off his musicianship in his latest album as a pop star that not only writes his own songs and plays piano, but creatively composes the instrumentation for the album.
Oh wow – it’s album time again. All those hours, days, weeks, months. All that writing, singing, recording, performing and mixing. It’s finally OUT !!!!! It always feels scary. I really hope you like it. https://t.co/wulalhC0eo pic.twitter.com/Krrcfu1QNA
— Gary Barlow (@GaryBarlow) November 27, 2020
Music News has commented on Gary approaching universal with the idea for his album saying, “I went to Universal, the record company, and I said, ‘Listen, I have got this idea but can I just record three songs? I don’t mean demos, I want to put the orchestra on, I want to mix it, I want to get right down the road with three songs’. And so I did: Big string sections, brass sections, the whole thing. I really wanted to know that it was right. Then I played it to them and they just said, ‘Listen, just go and finish the bloody thing. It’s fantastic.'”
David Joseph, boss at Universal Music UK has praised Barlow’s songwriting and the quality of his latest release to Music Week saying, “He’s got an extremely high quality threshold and he clearly knew what record he wanted to make. But it’s one thing knowing what record you want to make and how you want it to feel, the other thing is actually writing and recording a record that lives up to those expectations.”
The album which is made up of 14 songs and features artists such as Michael Bublé, Beverly Knight, Alesha Dixon and James Cordon amongst others. Luckily, The recording for the album the album was finished two weeks before lockdown after the pandemic hit. On explaining how the album came together, The Glasgow Times wrote, “And then it kind of took on another life then and I realised, actually, it’s not just an orchestral record, it’s a record celebrating musicians, that’s what it is.”
He continued to say “And their art, and the way they play together, and I don’t know if you’ve ever had the privilege of being stood near an orchestra, but to stand in the middle while they are playing my music, I mean it’s just thrilling on every level.”
As written in a previous article earlier this month in mxdwn UK, Barlow has already announced a UK Arena Tour for 2021. There is no doubt the tour will be hugely popular after the long awaited return of live music, as Gary will be performing songs from his new album with an orchestra plus special guest Beverly Knight. More information and ticket sales can be found here.
Album List
1. Who’s Driving This Thing
2. Incredible
3. Elita (ft Michael Bublé & Sebastían Yatra)
4. The Big Bass Drum
5. This Is My Time
6. Enough Is Enough (ft Beverley Knight)
7. Bad Libran
8. Eleven (ft Ibrahim Maalouf)
9. Before We Get Too Old (ft Avishai Cohen)
10. Supernatural
11. Oh What A Day (ft Chilly Gonzales)
12. What Leaving’s All About (ft Alesha Dixon)
13. The Kind Of Friend I Need (ft James Corden)
14. I Didn’t See That Coming
Deluxe edition:
15. Let’s Get Drunk
16. The Day The World Stopped Turning
17. You Make The Sun Shine (ft Barry Manilow)
18. Incredible (Live)
19. Incredible (F9 Charleston Remix)
