🔸𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐋𝐁𝐔𝐌 𝐒𝐋𝐄𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐆𝐇𝐎𝐒𝐓𝐒🔸

”𝙄’𝙢 𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙙 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙛𝙖𝙘𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙖𝙡𝙗𝙪𝙢 𝙝𝙖𝙨 𝙣𝙤 𝙙𝙧𝙪𝙜 𝙧𝙚𝙛𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙨.”
(Brian Molko, X-Ray, April 2003)

“𝗦𝗟𝗘𝗘𝗣𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗪𝗜𝗧𝗛 𝗚𝗛𝗢𝗦𝗧𝗦” is Placebo's fourth studio album. It was released on March 24th 2003 and reached no. 11 in the UK Albums Chart.
The record consists of 12 songs about past relationships and how do deal with them. Brian said that he became quite obsessed by the idea that you carry the ghosts of this relationships with you for the rest of your life and that people come back to haunt you. So 'Sleeping with ghosts' became an album about exorcising those demons of the past. And in that way it became a very therapeutic and cathartic thing for him.

Photo credit unknown

📜 𝗧𝗥𝗔𝗖𝗞𝗟𝗜𝗦𝗧
Bulletproof Cupid
English Summer Rain
This Picture
Sleeping with ghosts
The bitter end
Something rotten
Plasticine
Special Needs
I'll be yours
Second sight
Protect me from what I want
Centrefolds

📌 𝗕𝗥𝗜𝗔𝗡 𝗢𝗡 “𝗦𝗟𝗘𝗘𝗣𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗪𝗜𝗧𝗛 𝗚𝗛𝗢𝗦𝗧𝗦” 📌
📢 ”I've had many experiences the last few years, and I think it's a bit sad if you're still the same person you were when you were 20 at 30. Then you're not a fully developed human and then you haven't learned from the experiences you had the years before. The memories are certainly there and 'Sleeping with ghosts' is about how do deal with them. You look back and think about if your memories are accurate. If they're objective or not. And I believe that with me they are subjective. And I also believe we carry the ghosts of past relationships with us till we die.”
(DNAsix, March 2003)

📢 "Trying to push your sound forwards without turning your back on all the things that make the band unique and recognisable is definitely a difficult balance, but I think we pulled it off."
(Scotland on Sunday, April 2003)

📹 𝗜'𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀 – 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗸𝗲𝗲𝗻𝗻𝗲𝘀 𝟮𝟬𝟬𝟰
https://bit.ly/3IfAr8v 

📢 “Writing lyrics is always quite a cathartic experience but I think I probably exorcised more demons on this album than any of the others. I was approaching 30, I'd just moved into a new apartment and had all this time on my hands to reflect on all the relationships I've had.“
(Scotland on Sunday, April 2003)

Photo credit: Perou

📢 "Obviously, certain songs are about particular people or things that reminded me of them, but I think there's a shared history there because we've all been through the types of relationships described on this record. The title 'Sleeping with ghosts' is about a smell or object or film reminding you of a certain person or misdemeanour."
(Scotland on Sunday, April 2003)

📢 “This record is the most emotional and honest we’ve made.”
(Rock Sound, April 2003)

📢 “We had to ask ourselves a lot of questions with this album. Were we still relevant? Did we still deserve to sell records? It meant we had to strike a very fine balance between not turning our backs on eveything that had made us Placebo and still pushing our sound. This time I did that without having to give reference to the contents of my medicine cabinet or a whole series of ‘fucks’ and ‘shits’. I’ve reached a point where I don’t need that as much, which must mean the writing’s getting better.”
(Rock Sound, April 2003)

📹 𝗦𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 – 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗻𝗲 𝟮𝟬𝟬𝟯
https://bit.ly/3Ige9TV 

📢 ”In Placebo world it’s never been as simple as boy meets girl. The people who exist in these songs still aren’t particularly healthy. I’ve used this album to look back on relationships I’ve had over the past 10 years and whatever masochism is going on in the song is nearly always directed towards myself – ‘you’ actually means ‘me’.”
(Rock Sound, April 2003)

📢 ”This album is a return to what we do best really, it’s dealing with relationships again. It’s got so much to do with the fact that we had an eight month period off beforehand to think for the first time and be human beings, to reacquaint ourselves with humanity outside of the rock’n’roll bubble. It was very natural that those were the kind of songs that were coming out.”
(X-Ray, April 2003)

📢 ”By the time I reached 30 I realised there is no tragedy without joy in the first place. I became quite obsessed by the idea that you carry the ghosts of your relationships past with you for the rest of your life and people come back to haunt you, and that this is often triggered by external stimuli – smells, a song on the radio, an article of clothing, a book, whatever. I wondered what effect your memory still had on you to this day, regardless of the amount of time from the end of the relationship and where you are now and how you’ve moved on. Along the way, I managed to exorcise a few personal demons.”
(X-Ray, April 2003)

📹 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗲 – 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝟮𝟬𝟬𝟯
https://bit.ly/3G7zi0T 

📢 “I had this eight month period to look back through everything I’d been through emotionally and I started to deal with it for the first time. I started to think very much about the relationships I’ve had over the past ten years and whether they’d changed me and the effect that they’d had on me. So 'Sleeping with ghosts' became an album about exorcising the demons of your past relationships. And in that way, it became a very therapeutic and cathartic thing for me.”
(X-Ray, April 2003)

Photo credit: Carole Epinette

📢 ”Is about trying to deal with your memory and trying to deal with those ghosts that you carry around with you, continuously, the people, the events that shaped you. Trying, I guess, to accept them and learn from them in order to take healthier steps towards the future.”
(Suicide Girls, February 2004)

📹𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗺𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗜 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 – 𝗥𝗼𝗰𝗸 𝗔𝗺 𝗥𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝟮𝟬𝟬𝟯
https://bit.ly/3pk8qnD 

📢 "The album title's about carrying the ghosts of your relationships with you, to the point where sometimes a smell or situation or an item of clothing they bought you kind of brings a person back. For me it's about the relationship that you have with your memories. They inhabit your dreams sometimes. There can be a lot in the future that's gonna remind you of the ghost of relationships past. So I see the album as a collection of short stories about a handful of relationships. Most of them mine. In a way writing the songs helps me to get a lot of the nasty things off my chest and put them in a box a little bit more, and therefore have a bit more of an objective discourse with those emotions because you've done something positive with them, you've rid yourself of them."
(ReadMag, November 25th 2003)

📢 “Working with Jim Abbiss was great – he is a guy with very strong ideas and we asked him to give us a real kick up the ass. He made us listen to music in a different way and we had to give up a lot of control. There is no formula in what we do, we like to feel around in the dark and see what we like, letting the songs present themselves. I would describe this album as an emotional jigsaw puzzle.”
(Drowned in Sound, March 2003)

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