A Beautiful World

A Beautiful World is the debut studio album by American singer-songwriter Robin Thicke. Originally released on October 15, 2002, the album went under the Cherry Blue Skies but was later renamed to the latter. On April 15, 2003; the album was reissued and features the extra tracks "A Beautiful World" and "She's Gangsta". The woman featured on the cover of the album is Paula Patton, who was Thicke's then-girlfriend and his future wife.

Background and Composition

Speaking of the album's creation process, Thicke told Billboard “I had no idea what I was doing while I was doing it. I just made decisions based on what sounds good and feels good. If something started with a rock-guitar sound and it was a good riff, I would just keep going with it. If it was a hip-hop drum beat, I'd work with it." Reflecting on the album in 2008, Thicke described it as an “expression and the limitless possibilities of music" and said, "I just tried to do anything and everything on it.”

Chart performance

Beautiful World

Beautiful World may refer to:

Albums

Songs

Beautiful World (Utada Hikaru song)

"Beautiful World" is a song by Japanese musician Utada Hikaru. It served as the theme song for Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone, the 2007 film reboot of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. It was released as a double A-side single on August 29, 2007 along with her song "Kiss & Cry", which had been released digitally three months earlier. In 2009, a remix of the song, "Beautiful World (Planitb Acoustica Mix)" served as the theme song of the second film in the series, Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance.

Background and development

In 2006, Utada released her fifth studio album, Ultra Blue, led by the digital single "This Is Love". In February 2007, Utada released "Flavor of Life", the theme song for the drama Hana Yori Dango Returns, which became one of her most commercially successful singles, selling over eight million downloads and becoming the second most digitally successful song of 2007 globally.

On April 20, Utada's song "Kiss & Cry" began to be used to commercials for Nissin Foods' Freedom Project advertising campaign, and was released as a digital download on May 31. Utada's recording of the jazz standard "Fly Me to the Moon", originally found on her "Wait & See (Risk)" (2000) single, was rearranged and released as a digital download on June 29. Renditions of this song had previously been used in the original Neon Genesis Evangelion animation's soundtrack, and Utada's version was used in trailers for Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone.

Beautiful World (Devo song)

"Beautiful World" is a song by the American new wave band Devo, written by Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh. It appears on the album New Traditionalists.

Most of the songs on New Traditionalists are darker and more direct than on previous Devo albums. The exception to this is "Beautiful World," whose message seems optimistic at first but changes as the song progresses. This is made even clearer by the song's promotional video.

Music video

"Beautiful World" is considered by many fans and critics to be Devo's greatest music video, setting the tune to a series of connected images from film archives. The video features Booji Boy prominently, as he initially watches scenes of beautiful women, futuristic cars, and other happy elements, which by the end of the song have been replaced by images of race riots, the Ku Klux Klan, World War I, famine in Africa, car crashes and nuclear explosions, which puts a much darker slant on the song's lyrics. The video was slightly censored for broadcasts on the ABC-TV music show Countdown. A small segment of archive footage depicting a woman on fire was considered unsuitable for the show's early evening timeslot—despite the fact that the 'flames' were animated, not real—and this censored version is still screened occasionally on the ABC's music video series Rage, including a mid-1990s episode hosted by Devo.