Ocean Eyes (2009)

Ocean Eyes is the second studio album and major label debut by American electronica project Owl City, released on July 14, 2009, by Universal Republic Records. It features a photograph of the Burj Al Arab as its album artwork. A vinyl edition was released, followed by a deluxe edition available on January 26, 2010. The deluxe edition incorporates four new tracks, including a remix of "Hello Seattle". The album contains guest vocals by Relient K vocalist Matt Thiessen on the songs "Fireflies", "Cave In", "The Bird and the Worm", and "Tidal Wave".

Background

In the 2000s, the works of the Postal Service inspired a wave of emo-influenced synthpop acts such as PlayRadioPlay!, Hellogoodbye, and Owl City. Just before Ocean Eyes's July 2009 release, Owl City garnered two hits on the Top Electronic Albums chart and over 40 million plays on MySpace. Owl City began developing a following on MySpace, which led to Adam Young signing with Universal Republic in February 2009.

On July 14, 2009, the song "Fireflies" was chosen as the Single of the Week by the iTunes Store. This led to a huge success as the song was downloaded over 650,000 times. This success also led to the record company pushing back the release date of the physical copy of the album from July 28, 2009, to September 1, 2009. In October 2009, its lead single, "Fireflies", topped the Billboard Hot 100. The song featured guest vocals from Matt Thiessen of Relient K. Young was also joined by Breanne Düren on several tracks; the most notable example of which is "The Saltwater Room".

The album contains slightly different versions of songs from previous albums, namely "Hello Seattle" from Of June, along with "On the Wing" and "The Saltwater Room" from Maybe I'm Dreaming.

Young revealed the origin of the album's title when he said:

I'm from the middle of nowhere in Minnesota you see, so the ocean has always been a curiously dreamy, ethereal, almost romantic thing to me. Over the years I spent a great deal of time with my eyes closed, imagining myself having the most wonderful adventures by the seaside. Doing things one can only do in dusk and glow and midsummer dreams, as if the back of my closed eyelids were a silver screen and I was a sentimental projectionist with hundreds of fanciful reels at hand, all ready to roll. Thus is the reasoning behind the title.

Composition and recording

Ocean Eyes was mostly recorded in the basement of Young's parents house, before he got his own place and finished it up there. Inspired by simple decorations, Young uses landscape paintings with a lot of ethereal and dreamy nature photography to create the music on the album. The album was solely created by Young himself, which allowed him to "think more freely." Many of the album's songs feature abstract and imaginary lyrics, such as "Hot Air Balloon", "Hello Seattle", "Cave In" and "Strawberry Avalanche". He also wrote songs about places he's never visited before, such as "Hello Seattle". Other tracks references Young's faith to God, like "Tidal Wave" and "Meteor Shower". He also pointed how the latter was the "most important" track to him. Some songs are more personal such as "Fireflies", a song about Young's struggle with insomnia and "Vanilla Twilight", a song about a girl he met in high school. "The Tip of the Iceberg" is a song he wrote after he spent a month studying natural habitats and the environment.

Promotion

Between May and June 2009, Owl City performed many shows in support of his forthcoming album. In May, Owl City performed at the 2009 Bamboozle festival. In the summer, Owl City embarked on his first headlining tour, as well as opened several dates for Relient K. He later toured in the fall from September to October, before heading to Japan in November 2009. In January 2010, Owl City embarked on the Ocean Eyes Tour in the United States with support from Lights and Deas Vail. A European leg took place from February to March 2010, with Lights joining him again. He returned to North America from March to May 2010. In the summer of 2010, Owl City opened for Maroon 5 and John Mayer. He concluded the Ocean Eyes tour in Australia and New Zealand in November 2010.