World Party - Egyptology
In praise of a massively underrated pop album (R.I.P. Karl Wallinger)
A Man (Band) Out of Time
Karl Wallinger deserved better.
One of the most tuneful songwriters of the modern age, a true torch-holder from the Lennon-McCartney school of pop craft, Wallinger — who would release his most noteworthy music under the World Party moniker — was reaching new heights of popularity and recognition in the early 90s with his sophomore album Goodbye Jumbo (1990) and its follow up, Bang (1993).
Songs like “Way Down Now” and “Is It Like Today?” received critical acclaim and regular airplay and garnered Wallinger collaborations with such luminaries as Peter Gabriel and Sinead O’Connor. The sky seemed to be the limit for World Party.
Then, in 1997, Wallinger released Egyptology, four years after Bang. Another lush, Beatlesesque collection of orchestral pop and psychedelia, Egyptology was strangely lambasted in the press.
Perhaps four years was too long.
By this point, grunge had taken over as the dominant sound in the rock universe and heart-on-the-sleeve ballads like “She’s the One” and “Love is Best” were anathema to the angry, depressive and bombastic songs of bands like Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots.
The top Brit-pop groups of the day — Oasis, Blur, and Pulp — were all caught up in various stages of posturing, partying, and exuding “cooler than thou” attitudes, which didn’t mesh with Wallinger’s more introverted, classical approach.
Also working against him, perhaps, was the fact that World Party was a party of one. Wallinger played every instrument except drums (Chris Sharrock, who also co-produced) on every track of Egyptology. An impressive feat, considering the full-band feel of the album, which features ornate string arrangements, assorted wind instruments, and layers of guitars.
But some folks don’t like musical geniuses who can master every instrument they pick up. I mean, that’s why Prince put together a band after playing all the parts on For You, realizing that people don’t like it when you take their jobs. Especially the one’s they never had to begin with.
Okay, maybe being a one-man band didn’t have anything to do with the commercial and critical failure of Egyptology’s initial release. It didn’t seem to affect Sufjan Stevens when he did essentially the same thing with his acclaimed album Greetings From Michigan.
It’s easy enough to lump World Party into the retro-rock camp: a place where artists such as Lenny Kravitz and Mayer Hawthorne reside. Wallinger certainly played the part visually — often seen dressed in paisley shirts and omnipresent, round John Lennon glasses — but musically, the Beatles comparison he often received seemed to apply more to World Party’s wide-ranging genre-blending abilities and gorgeous melodies than any direct-copying or mimicry.
So, What Happened?
Why did Egyptology fail to set the world on fire back in 1997?
Other than the reasons already mentioned — timing, the grunge factor — another important component was this: Wallinger’s label (Chrysalis) barely promoted the album. I’ll get into that some more below, but keep in mind that in 1997, the labels ran the show. Streaming (at least on a widespread level) was more than a decade away. Getting played on the radio still mattered when it came to album/CD sales.
A 40-year-old singer-songwriter with a song about Hercules and another titled “The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb” — from a label executive perspective, did not scream out “profitable.”
So, while label apathy certainly played a big role, I’m not convinced that the album would have been a chart-topper had Chrysalis given it its proper due.
Egyptology was both ahead of its time and behind the times. Which makes it perfect to revisit 25 years later.
THE SONGS
Although the tracking on Egyptology has a well-considered flow, from upbeat rockers to emotional ballads to psychedelic jams, I’ll go on the record to say that there is filler in the last 3rd of the album.
Minus the generic and sluggish piano-led blues of “Piece of Mind” and the throwaway final track “Always,” Egyptology would be a near-flawless album top to bottom. Without those two songs, the running time would drop from an hour to a respectable 50 minutes. But that’s nitpicking, as even recognized great albums such as Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main Street and The Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band had songs that felt okay to skip past. It’s often an album’s imperfections that make it pass the test of time. Speaking of time….
“It Is Time” and “Beautiful Dream” begin the album with a driving one-two punch, a confident and energized introduction that illustrates Wallinger’s gift at layered vocal harmonies and wistful melodies.
The album’s 3rd track, “Call Me Up,” perhaps the most straightforward pop song on Egyptology, sounds like it could have been a lost Beatles track from the Abbey Road sessions. Clocking in at under three minutes, the song is still able to fit in an unexpected sonic detour, the arrangement suddenly stripping down to piano and voice at minute two, Wallinger cheekily singing:
“Whatever happened to those bits in the middle/You know those crazy piano bits
I used to think that it went like that/But it really went like this.”
This was the song the label chose as the “single” and though it did reach #31 on the British charts, it didn’t register anywhere else and quickly disappeared.
While the album is chock-full of great pop songs like “Call Me Up,” — “The Whole of the Night,” and “Vanity Fair” are standouts — my favorite is the gorgeous orchestral track, “Rolling Off a Log.” The layers of percussion, the tasteful strings and wind-instrument arrangements, the spoken word section in the middle, the guitar solo near the end….the song defines sublime.
If the album were only lush pop songs, it would still be wonderful, but two psychedelic jams break up the Egyptology pillow party.
“Hercules,” which comes halfway into the album, is somehow only three minutes and fifteen seconds long, yet it feels like a ten-minute epic played by a full band of maybe six or eight musicians. That Wallinger is almost all of the musicians blows my mind.
And then there’s “Strange Groove,” which is exactly what the title promises. It captures that stoney/acid-trip vibe perfectly, grooving on the same 2-bar riff for four minutes, with just the right amount of reverb on the guitar and silliness in the lyrics.
Three ballads pepper the album, allowing Egyptology to slow down, breathe, and perhaps even bring a few tears to the eyes.
“Love is Best” and “This World” are wonderful and gorgeous, but one song in particular is a clear stand out, and if you know anything about this album, you know this song.
She’s The One
I’ve made it this far and I haven’t talked about the elephant-in-the-room tune from Egyptology yet. The song that has 50x more plays on Spotify than any other on the album.
“She’s The One” should have been the song that made World Party (and by extension, Wallinger) a household name. But his label, Chrysalis, barely promoted the album, choosing “Call Me Up” as the album’s single, which, as I mentioned earlier, came and went in the blink of an eye.
Shortly thereafter, unbeknownst to Wallinger, Chrysalis gave “She’s The One” to label-mate Robbie Williams, who would reach #1 on the charts with his version of the song.
According to the Wikipedia entry for “She’s The One,” for years Williams had claimed to have written it, never publicly acknowledging Wallinger’s songwriting credit until 2019.
Wallinger, unsurprisingly, was not happy about the label’s deceptive thievery of his song, but time, fate, and hefty royalty checks would cause him to change his tune.
That’s because, in 2001, Wallinger suffered a brain aneurysm and required years of intensive and expensive therapies to regain motor functions, not to mention his musical skills.
Here’s a podcast episode that goes into the history of “She’s The One” and the supremely messed up yet ultimately redemptive arcs that followed Williams’ poaching of Wallinger’s song.
Wallinger has gone on the record as saying that if it weren’t for the royalties from Robbie Williams’ version of “She’s the One” he wouldn’t have been able to afford all his medical bills. He’s expressed profound gratitude for the financial gain the song has brought to him.
It proves that you never know how things are gonna turn out. What started off as a dick move by Chrysalis giving World Party’s song to RW, ended up playing a huge role in extending his career once he recovered enough to write and perform again.
Still, if you go on YouTube, there are countless videos of people covering “She’s The One,” and the vast majority of them call it a “Robbie Williams song.” It’s a sad reality that artists throughout history have had their work ripped off, plagiarized, uncredited, and ignored.
But I will do my part to help correct the record, through writing essays like this, hoping to bring great music and important artists to the forefront, and, ideally, turning some folks onto essential albums at the same time.
Thanks so much for reading!
Have you heard Egyptology before? Was it brand new to you? Let me know in the comments your thoughts on the songs and your feelings on World Party.
Hmm, interesting post. I had never heard any of these, not even "She's the one". (If I've heard any of the covers, they didn't register.) You cite the dichotomy between grunge and this sort of pop rock, but I think what really nuked pop rock was hip-hop. In any case, I knew I had checked out of the American pop scene by the 90's, and this sort of confirms it. My taste runs to harder and more technical (but still melodic), so it's no surprise. I agree with you: "Rolling off a Log" is the best song on the album (I listened to the samples and a few of the full clips, and for me it's a slam-dunk!) This guy was clearly an impressive multi-instrumentalist, but the album feels cliched, sort of like early Badfinger, just two decades on. That's the danger of being from the Lennon-McCartney school, as you put it. Finally, your point about mis-attribution is so important. As we've discussed in your comments to my column, whole categories of artists were unjustly erased from the canon. Great to put the word out on their behalf, no matter how belated.
Thanks, Steve. I was totally into World Party for the first 3 albums and then stopped listening. Perhaps 4 years was too long? Who knows. One of my favorites was always ‘And I Fell Back Alone’ from Goodbye Jumbo. Somehow, after all these years, I‘ve never heard Egyptology. Sounds like it’s time I give it a spin on Spotify. Perhaps it will save me from tomorrow.