''Get Born'' is the debut studio album by Australian rock band
Jet
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* Journey to Enceladus a ...
. It was released on 14 September 2003 and has sold over 4 million copies worldwide. The album includes Jet's most popular song, " Are You Gonna Be My Girl".
Writing and recording
Jet entered the
Sunset Sound Studios
Sunset Sound Recorders is a recording studio in Hollywood, California, United States located at 6650 Sunset Boulevard.
Background
The Sunset Sound Recorders complex was created by Walt Disney's Director of Recording, Tutti Camarata, from a collec ...
in
Los Angeles
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with Dave Sardy to produce their debut album ''Get Born''. Sardy had previously produced records for
Marilyn Manson
Brian Hugh Warner (born January 5, 1969), known professionally as Marilyn Manson, is an American rock musician. He came to prominence as the lead singer of the band which shares his name, of which he remains the only constant member since it ...
and
The Dandy Warhols
The Dandy Warhols are an American alternative rock band, formed in Portland, Oregon, in 1994 by singer-guitarist Courtney Taylor-Taylor and guitarist Peter Holmström. They were later joined by keyboardist Zia McCabe and drummer Eric Hedford ...
. The band left the recording studios halfway through recording the album to fly back to support
the Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for six decades, they are one of the most popular and enduring bands of the rock era. In the early 1960s, the Rolling Stones pioneered the gritty, rhythmically d ...
on their 2003 Australian tour.
"Are You Gonna Be My Girl", from this album, was voted number one in the 2003 Triple J Hottest 100. ''Get Born'' also has a song, "Timothy", dedicated to guitarist Cameron Muncey's brother, who died when he was a baby (the song has also been remixed for American rapper
Timbaland
Timothy Zachery Mosley (born March 10, 1972), known professionally as Timbaland, is an American record producer, rapper, singer, songwriter, and record executive. He has received widespread acclaim for his innovative production work and distinc ...
's 2009 album '' Shock Value II''). The track "Radio Song" was written about when they were an unsigned band in Melbourne seeking attention, and "Rollover DJ" was written about the difficulty they encountered when trying to play gigs because of the takeover of dance music.
The album's name was derived from a lyric to the
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
song "
Subterranean Homesick Blues
"Subterranean Homesick Blues" is a song by Bob Dylan, recorded on January 14, 1965, and released as a single by Columbia Records, catalogue number 43242, on March 8. It was the lead track on the album ''Bringing It All Back Home'', released some ...
".
Critical reception
''Get Born'' received generally positive reviews from contemporary
music critics
Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on ...
. At
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an
average
In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...
score of 70, based on 15 reviews. '' Alternative Press'' gave it a rave review and found Jet's songs "catchy" and their appeal "diverse". '' Q'' magazine said that the album's raw immediacy "belies its dated influences." ''
Uncut
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'' called it "an efficient if fairly joyless hybrid of the Stones, AC/DC and
Oasis
In ecology, an oasis (; ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment In a negative review, ''
Pitchfork
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The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to ...
'' wrote that Jet sounds like "everyone's favorite old rock bands" and have "insipid lyrics", including interjections such as "come on!" and "oh yeah!" sung "every five seconds".
Robert Christgau
Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...
of ''
The Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, th ...
'' cited "Rollover D.J." and "Look What You've Done" as highlights and remarked that the band has "the juice and talent to make their retro happen without the brains or vision to run with it". He gave the album a two-star honorable mention, indicating a "likable effort consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well enjoy." In October 2010, ''Get Born'' was listed in the book ''
100 Best Australian Albums
1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. ...
''.
Lead single
The album's lead single, "Are You Gonna Be My Girl", was often singled out due to distinct similarities to
Iggy Pop
James Newell Osterberg Jr. (born April 21, 1947), known professionally as Iggy Pop, is an American singer, musician, songwriter and actor. Called the " Godfather of Punk", he was the vocalist and lyricist of proto-punk band The Stooges, who w ...
's " Lust for Life". The song featured a near-identical guitar riff, as well as a drum pattern markedly similar to that of Pop's well-known song. The band argued that "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" had more in common with '60s Motown, however; namely, songs such as " I'm Ready for Love" by Martha And The Vandellas and " You Can't Hurry Love" by
The Supremes
The Supremes were an American girl group and a premier act of Motown Records during the 1960s. Founded as the Primettes in Detroit, Michigan, in 1959, the Supremes were the most commercially successful of Motown's acts and the most successf ...
. In an
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the dat ...
review of "Are You Gonna Be My Girl", the song was praised for its commercial appeal despite its resemblance to "Lust for Life", saying "Whether 'Are You Gonna Be My Girl?' (sic) is creatively bankrupt, or just an extreme example of how all music is influenced by what came before it, is up for debate... Either way, the song is impossible to ignore."Chris Cester addressed the media speculation in an interview with ''Uptown Magazine'', stating: "It's funny because I asked him point blank about that. He said I was crazy. He said that when he and David Bowie were writing 'Lust for Life', they were ripping off Motown's beat. It's funny that he said that to me because we also thought we were ripping off Motown more than 'Lust for Life'. To be honest with you that kind of annoyed me a lot, because I always thought it was really lazy. People just go well 'Lust for Life' is more well-known so that's what they go for, but if you listen to a song like 'You Can't Hurry Love' (The Supremes) I think you'll find it's closer to 'Are You Gonna Be My Girl' than 'Lust for Life' ever was. And that's what Iggy said as well."
Commercial performance
''Get Born'' debuted at number three and peaked at number one on the Australian ARIA Charts, ARIA Albums Chart as of May 2004 (so far being certified 8× Platinum), number 17 on the
UK Albums Chart
The Official Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales and (from March 2015) audio streaming in the United Kingdom. It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the Official Charts ...
(number 14 after a re-entry in June 2004), and peaked at number 26 on the U.S. ''Billboard'' 200 albums chart (and was certified Platinum).
"Are You Gonna Be My Girl?" also peaked at number 20 and certified Gold on the Australian ARIA Singles Chart, number 23 on the
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart (currently titled Official Singles Chart, with the upper section more commonly known as the Official UK Top 40) is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-s ...
in September 2003 (number 16 after a re-release in May 2004), and number 29 on the U.S. ''Billboard'' Hot 100 singles chart.
The second single, "Rollover DJ", was released in Australia and the UK, and peaked at number 31 and number 34 respectively.
The third single released in Australia and the UK was "Look What You've Done", which peaked at number 14 and number 28 respectively. It was also released as the third single in the U.S. in January 2005, and reached number 37 as of March 2005.
In the US, "Cold Hard Bitch" was released as the second single, reaching number one on the ''Billboard'' Modern Rock and Mainstream Rock charts and number 55 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100. In Australia, it was released as the fourth single in July 2004, and reached number 33 in August 2004, and in the UK, it reached number 34 in September 2004.
A fifth single also charted in the UK, this being "Get Me Outta Here", reaching number 37 in December 2004.
In the week ending 11 September 2006, ''Get Born'' re-entered at a position of number 46 on the ARIA Charts, presumably because Jet had " Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is", the lead single from their second album, '' Shine On''.
Track listing
Personnel
Jet
*
Nic Cester
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Politics, government and economics
* National Ice Center, an agency that provides worldwide navigational ice ...
– lead vocals, guitars
* Chris Cester – drums, percussion, tambourine, backing vocals, lead vocals
* Cameron Muncey – guitars, backing vocals, lead vocals
* Mark Wilson – bass guitar, piano , harmonica
Additional musicians
*
Billy Preston
William Everett Preston (September 2, 1946 – June 6, 2006) was an American keyboardist, singer and songwriter whose work encompassed R&B, rock, soul, funk, and gospel. Preston was a top session keyboardist in the 1960s, during which he b ...
– keyboards
* Roger Joseph Manning Jr. – keyboards
* Andre Warhurst – slide guitar
* Dave Sardy – producer, tambourine, slide guitar , additional guitar
* Davey Lane – additional guitar