World Party

After a 1991 EP, Thank You World, World Party was scheduled for a high-profile tour supporting Neil Young. Instead, Ensign's founder Nigel Grainge, pulled Wallinger off the tour and encouraged him to begin recording the band's next release. It took him two more years to complete World Party's third album, Bang!. Despite the lost momentum from canceled touring, Bang! ended up being the band's biggest success in the U.K., reaching number two on the pop charts and yielding the Top 20 single "Is It Like Today?." An appearance at Glastonbury Festival helped expand their reach and in 1994 Wallinger contributed a song, "When You Come Back to Me," to the soundtrack of the film Reality Bites. After another lengthy stretch during which Wallinger mourned the death of his mother, he returned in 1997 with Egyptology. By this point momentum around World Party had begun to dim and the album failed to generate any significant traction. One of its singles, "She's the One," did earn Wallinger an Ivor Novello award and ended up being a number one hit a few years later when Robbie Williams recorded a version of it. At the time, there was some controversy about Williams covering it, although former World Party member Guy Chambers had taken it to him. Recorded without Wallinger's knowledge, Williams' version (produced by Chambers) featured a similar arrangement and backing by World Party's touring rhythm section, which created some lingering animosity from Wallinger despite the song's massive success. When Wallinger suffered a brain aneurysm a few years later, royalties from "She's the One" helped sustain him and his family during his lengthy recovery period. Having lost his contract with Ensign, Wallinger released 2000's Dumbing Up independently. It reached a respectable 64 on the U.K. charts and some positive reviews, but when Wallinger suffered his aneurysm a year later, World Party went on hiatus for much of the decade.

From 🇬🇧 United Kingdom