page_title: Badly Drawn Boy
section_title: Mainstream success: 1999–2002
hierarchical_section_title: Badly Drawn Boy / History / Mainstream success: 1999–2002
caption_attribution_description: English: Badly Drawn Boy playing a show in the Urban Lounge, Salt Lake City, Utah. (March 2007).
context_page_description: Damon Michael Gough, known by the stage name Badly Drawn Boy, is an English indie singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.
  Gough chose his stage name from a character in the show Sam and his Magic Ball, which he saw on TV at a party in Trafford, Greater Manchester, in 1995. Before he thought of using this name he made some business cards, each one unique, with a printed picture of a drawing by his nephew and a small collage by Gough.
  A chance meeting with Andy Votel at the Generation X bar in Manchester, where Gough's friends Scott Abraham and Damon Hayhurst were contributing to an exhibition by the Space Monkey Clothing Company and Votel was DJing, led to the foundation of Twisted Nerve Records.
  In 2002, Q magazine named Badly Drawn Boy in their list of the "50 Bands to See Before You Die", although this was as part of a sub-list of "5 Bands That Could Go Either Way" on account of Gough's tendency to talk and tell stories for extended periods in concert rather than play songs.
context_section_description: It Came from the Ground was the next EP, released in March 1999 on CD and vinyl. The style of this recording focused on woodland environments, an aspect displayed in both the cover art and the title track's video. Also released during this period was the single "Whirlpool". An instrumental was released on vinyl in April 1999.
  Gough's last EP, Once Around the Block, was released in August 1999 in two vinyl formats and one CD edition. The release is almost short enough to be considered a single.
  Following the success of his early EPs, Gough's first album, The Hour of Bewilderbeast, was released in June 2000, accompanied by four singles (including a re-release of Once Around the Block).
  The album was critically acclaimed and Badly Drawn Boy was successful in winning the 2000 Mercury Music Prize, beating his contemporaries Doves to the £20,000 prize. The album sold well (300,000 copies) and is widely considered to be his defining work.
  The Badly Drawn Boy band throughout this successful period consisted of Matt Wardle (keyboards/vocals), Robin File (guitar), Sean McCann (bass guitar) latterly replaced by the ex-Smiths bass guitarist Andy Rourke, Dave Verner (drums).
  After a short break, Gough returned to score the film adaptation of Nick Hornby's novel About a Boy. Impressed by his past work, the Weitz brothers asked Gough to score the film, a task which he undertook alone, with the assistance of producer Steve McLaughlin. Three singles from the album were released during 2002.
  His third album, Have You Fed the Fish?, introduced more guitars and an increasingly mainstream pop sound which was not welcomed by all critics. The album is a play on Gough's minor celebrity status. Another three singles and a long American tour accompanied the album. The single "You Were Right" received heavy airplay on BBC Radio 2, became his first UK top ten single and includes lyrical references to music icons such as Madonna and John Lennon.
caption: Gough playing a show in the Urban Lounge, Salt Lake City, Utah. (March 2007)
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