The Boxer (The Chemical Brothers song)

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"The Boxer"
Single by the Chemical Brothers
from the album Push the Button
B-side"Swiper"
Released11 July 2005 (2005-07-11)
Recorded2003–2004[1]
StudioMiloco (South London)[2]
Length
  • 4:08 (album version)
  • 3:42 (radio edit)
Label
Songwriter(s)
Producer(s)The Chemical Brothers
The Chemical Brothers singles chronology
"Believe"
(2005) 		"The Boxer"
(2005) 		"Do It Again"
(2007)

"The Boxer" is a song recorded by English

studio album Push the Button (2005). It served as the album's third single in the United Kingdom and Europe, released by Virgin Records and Freestyle Dust, and as the second single in the United States via Astralwerks. The song is a psychedelic pop track which features The Charlatans' lead singer Tim Burgess on vocals and as a co-writer. This is the second collaboration between Burgess and the duo, following "Life is Sweet
", which was released 10 years earlier.

However, it received mixed reviews from

Dance Singles Sales chart. Burgess and the duo later performed the track at the BBC Radio 2 Electric Proms
in 2007.

The song's music video was directed by director duo Ne-o and shot in Budapest, Hungary. The visual, which features a basketball bouncing around the streets with its owner running to catch it, drew comparisons with the 1956 short film The Red Balloon. A video for an alternate version of the song was directed by Adam Smith and donated to the charity group Good for Nothing's 50/50 Make or Break campaign in 2011. It was also remixed by DFA, whose version received much acclaim from critics.

Background and production

'The Boxer'
A psychedelic pop song, "The Boxer", features a looping piano sample on a mid-tempo rhythm with Burgess' "weedy and soft" vocals.[3][4][5]
Problems playing this file? See media help.

When the Chemical Brothers started to write music again after finishing the album Come with Us (2002), "The Boxer" was one of the earliest tracks they composed for their next album, Push the Button (2005).[1] The Charlatans' lead singer Tim Burgess, who had collaborated on the duo's debut album track "Life Is Sweet" 10 years earlier, contributed the song's vocals. According to the group, of all their collaborators, Burgess remained a close friend. They shared that, "If he's in London, we would probably have a drink together, three of us, or, you know, when we're in Los Angeles, he will come to our gig."[1]

Originally, the song's chorus was "set in stone," but the Chemical Brothers asked Burgess to sing it and write some additional lyrics.

hustler, I'm a tiger"—in the same vocal style he used earlier in his career, which Burgess himself described as "weedy and soft".[5][6] The duo said that the resulting vocal sounds very different from the one on their previous collaboration.[1] The Guardian's Alexis Petridis described it as having a "standard-issue mid-Atlannick accent".[6]

B-Boy/techno days".[7]

Release

On 11 July 2005, the song was released as two

Mediolanum Forum.[11] The second UK CD single contains the same tracklist and an additional music video for its title track while the 12-inch single containing the original, the DFA version and "Swiper".[12][13]

A day later, the CD and the 12-inch single were released in the United States as the album's second single; both were expanded to

The Roundhouse in Camden, London.[19]

DFA version

The DFA version, mixed by British DJ Tim Goldsworthy and LCD Soundsystem's member, American musician James Murphy, was later added to their remix album The DFA Remixes: Chapter One (2006).[20] This remix received much praise from critics, with Billboard's Kerri Mason singling it out as "the soundtrack to a 20-something hipster walking the downtown streets, iPod in pocket" that also "sounds like a Paradise Garage-era Peter Brown record".[21] Tim Finney from Pitchfork highly praised the "Pearsonesque remix" as the "synth-laden Balearic house number that shimmers with unabashed gorgeousness".[22] Along with another lengthy song on the album, the remix for Hot Chip's "(Just Like We) Breakdown", both were said in a review by Zeth Lundy of PopMatters to "unfold with a delicate subtext manufactured by the slow-building minimalism—they're patient dedications to the mutability of the groove, never boring and always fascinating to experience".[23] musicOMH's Tom Woods said that "a wealth of percussive techniques" keeps things "fresh and interesting", but criticised its length which made the song become a "stretch". He added that, "vocal use is less dominant here, which gives Murphy a chance to demonstrate a clear talent for sculpting dynamic synth-led beats".[24]

Reception

Critical reception

Burgess' performance received mixed reactions from music critics

In a review for PopMatters, music critic Tim O'Neil called the song "an odd track" that sounded like nothing he'd heard before. He continued: "I wouldn't be surprised if it was the next single [after "Galvanize"], because its [sic] not the kind of track you forget."[4] John Bush of AllMusic listed the track as one of his album's track picks, while Michaelangelo Matos of Spin called it one of the album's best moments—one that was "less about the successive climaxes than steady-state flow".[25][26] Jack Smith of BBC Music described the song as "cutting edge" and "hook-laden", also highlighted it as "a welcome return" for Burgess.[27]

However, The Guardian's review by Alexis Petridis was very negative. He criticised Burgess' vocal styling as "the Awful

grime".[29]

Chart performance

In the United Kingdom, the duo's home country, the song entered the

Hot Dance Singles Sales chart in the 30 July issue.[33][34]

Music video

The video was filmed in Budapest, Hungary over several days

London-based director duo Ne-o, Jake Knight and Ryoko Tanaka, directed the music video for "The Boxer".[35] They were on holiday in Hong Kong and were sent a track with DRM which Knight said made it frustrating to play through dial-up connection.[36] Tanaka eventually came up with the idea of a ball that "connected through things".[36] Knight did not quite understand the idea at first, but through a process of miscommunication, they wrote the video's treatment about "a crazy basketball" which was the quickest treatment they had ever written at the time.[36]

The video was then filmed in

3D animation using Autodesk Softimage.[36]

Writing in his book Reinventing Music Video: Next-generation Directors, Their Inspiration, and Work, British author-director Matt Hanson claimed some might call the video the duo's first action sequence and stated it could be considered "a high-octane version" of Albert Lamorisse's short film The Red Balloon. He wrote: "While [the short] was a poetic 1956 study of a boy befriended by a balloon, here the action is reversed and revved up, with the basketball defiantly trying to bounce away from the city street kid."[36]

The video opens with a boy with a basketball in his bag walking out of a car park. The basketball then begins to bounce out of the bag, jumps out of the city streets and gets into a

phone booth near Baross Street, swells to an enormous size, and explodes.[37]

Later in 2011, the Chemical Brothers and director Adam Smith (credited as Flat Nose George) donated the visual of an alternate version of the song entitled "50/50 Mix", in support of the 50/50 Make or Break campaign. 50/50 Make or Break was a fundraising project aimed at raising money for East Africa, created by UK-based charity group Good for Nothing.[38]

Formats and track listings

Credits and personnel

Credits adapted from the CD single liner notes.[39]

Charts

Weekly chart performance for "The Boxer"
Chart (2005) Peak
position
Ireland (IRMA)[31] 36
Scotland (OCC)[40]
 38
Spain (PROMUSICAE)[33] 17
UK Singles (OCC)[41]
 41
US Dance Singles Sales (Billboard)[34] 15

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Push The Button – Interview Disc (Interview disc). The Chemical Brothers. United Kingdom: Virgin Records. 2004. XDUSTCIV7.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  2. ^ Push the Button (Compact Disc liner notes). The Chemical Brothers. United Kingdom: Virgin Records. 2005. 0724356330221.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  3. ^
    Amazon. Archived
    from the original on 23 October 2016. Retrieved 29 December 2016.
  4. ^ a b c O'Neil, Tim (27 January 2005). "The Chemical Brothers – Push the Button review". PopMatters. PopMatters Media, Inc. Archived from the original on 3 June 2016. Retrieved 30 June 2016.
  5. ^ a b McNeill, Jonjo (7 January 2007). "The Charlatans interview". Penny Black Music. Archived from the original on 11 October 2016. Retrieved 29 December 2016.
  6. ^ a b c Petridis, Alexis (21 January 2005). "The Chemical Brothers – Push the Button review". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 22 August 2016. Retrieved 30 June 2016.
  7. ^ a b Plagenhoef, Scott (3 February 2005). "The Chemical Brothers — Push the Button review". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on 27 June 2016. Retrieved 30 June 2016.
  8. ^ "New Releases: Singles". Music Week. 9 July 2005. p. 21.
  9. ^ a b "The Chemical Brothers – The Boxer (European CD1)". Discogs. Archived from the original on 9 October 2016. Retrieved 30 July 2016.
  10. ^ a b "The Chemical Brothers – The Boxer (UK CD1)". Discogs. Archived from the original on 12 October 2016. Retrieved 30 July 2016.
  11. ^ a b "The Chemical Brothers – The Boxer (European CD2)". Discogs. Archived from the original on 9 October 2016. Retrieved 15 July 2016.
  12. ^ a b "The Chemical Brothers – The Boxer (UK CD2)". Discogs. Archived from the original on 12 October 2016. Retrieved 15 July 2016.
  13. ^ a b "The Chemical Brothers – The Boxer (UK 12")". Discogs. Archived from the original on 9 October 2016. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
  14. ^ a b "The Chemical Brothers – The Boxer (US 12")". Discogs. Archived from the original on 9 October 2016. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
  15. ^ "Giant" was previously released on the Europe and UK CD single of "Believe", while "Spring" appeared on the UK maxi-enhanced single of the same track. Three of the CDs were released on 2 May 2005. Sources:
  16. ^ a b Amazon (12 July 2005). "The Chemical Brothers – The Boxer". Amazon. Archived from the original on 1 April 2018. Retrieved 30 December 2016.
  17. ^ a b "The Boxer (Radio Edit) – Single". iTunes Store (GB). Archived from the original on 21 January 2016. Retrieved 31 July 2016.
  18. ^ a b "The Boxer – Single". iTunes Store (GB). Archived from the original on 14 September 2016. Retrieved 2 August 2015.
  19. ^ "2007 Electric Proms: The Chemical Brothers". BBC Electric Proms. BBC. 25 October 2007. Archived from the original on 21 April 2016. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
  20. ^ "The DFA – The DFA Remixes: Chapter One". Discogs. Archived from the original on 11 October 2016. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
  21. ISSN 0006-2510
    . Retrieved 30 July 2016.
  22. ^ Finney, Tim (6 April 2006). "Various Artists — The DFA Remixes: Chapter One review". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on 2 August 2016. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
  23. ^ Lundy, Zeth (1 May 2006). "Various Artists — The DFA Remixes: Chapter One review". PopMatters. PopMatters Media, Inc. Archived from the original on 28 August 2016. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
  24. ^ Woods, Tom (27 March 2006). "Various Artists — The DFA Remixes: Chapter One review". musicOMH. Archived from the original on 16 August 2016. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
  25. ^ Bush, John. "The Chemical Brothers – Push the Button review". AllMusic. Retrieved 30 June 2016.
  26. ISSN 0886-3032
    . Retrieved 1 August 2016.
  27. ^ Smith, Jack. "The Chemical Brothers – Push the Button review". BBC Music. BBC. Archived from the original on 9 January 2016. Retrieved 30 June 2016.
  28. ^ D'Cruz, Matt (18 January 2005). "The Chemical Brothers – Push the Button review". Drowned in Sound. Archived from the original on 17 September 2016. Retrieved 30 June 2016.
  29. ^ Henderson, Eric (24 January 2005). "The Chemical Brothers – Push the Button review". Slant Magazine. Archived from the original on 7 August 2016. Retrieved 30 June 2016.
  30. ^ "The Chemical Brothers' UK chart history". Official Charts Company. Archived from the original on 31 July 2016. Retrieved 28 July 2016.
  31. ^ a b "Irish-charts.com – Discography The Chemical Brothers". Irish Singles Chart. Retrieved 15 January 2020.
  32. ^ "Chart Track: Week 29, 2005". Irish Singles Chart. Archived from the original on 11 October 2016. Retrieved 28 July 2016.
  33. ^
    Canciones Top 50
    . Retrieved 30 June 2016.
  34. ^
    ISSN 0006-2510
    .
  35. ^ "About Ne-o". Ne-o's official website. Archived from the original on 22 August 2016. Retrieved 28 July 2016. Click about ne-o on the site.
  36. ^
    ISBN 2940361258
    . Retrieved 31 July 2016.
  37. ^ Pákozdi, Nóra (25 November 2014). "10 famous music video clips shot in Budapest". We Love Budapest. Archived from the original on 30 July 2016. Retrieved 30 June 2016.
  38. ^ Clarke, Cameron (17 October 2011). "The Chemical Brothers, Fallon and Flat Nose George create exclusive web video". The Drum. Carnyx Group Limited. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 30 July 2016.
  39. ^ The Boxer (CD1) (Compact Disc liner notes). The Chemical Brothers. United Kingdom: Virgin Records. 2005. 0094633166424.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  40. ^ "Official Scottish Singles Sales Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 6 July 2023.
  41. ^ "Official Singles Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 30 June 2016.

External links

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