Critical Response
Critical reaction to "(Drawing) Rings Around the World" was generally positive with many journalists comparing the song to the work of other groups. Writing for the NME, Ted Kessler described the track as "Status Quo for Generation X-ers with a Manhattan Portage full of millennial tension" and went on to ask "who said there was anything wrong with that?" in his review of the song on its release as a single, despite his earlier review of Rings Around the World claiming that the album would benefit from the removal of the "Status Quo-ish title track". Q described the track as "excellent" while PopMatters claimed the song "sounds so much like ELO that it blows away everything on last year's ELO reunion album" and the Dallas Observer stated that "(Drawing) Rings Around the World" is a "Beach Boys/Beatles/ELO homage as fine as the '70s heyday of Roy Wood's Wizzard or very early Cheap Trick".Pitchfork Media stated that the song "takes the upbeat Britpop of their debut album and layers on spectral details" while Uncut described the track as "tooled up rock 'n' roll modelled on "Surfin' U.S.A.". The Guardian claimed the song's lyrics tackle environmental issues with a "sharp wit" while Drowned in Sound saw them as evidence that chief songwriter Gruff Rhys was "taking his lyrics a little bit more seriously". The song was placed at number 21 in the 2001 Festive Fifty on John Peel's BBC Radio 1 show. "(Drawing) Rings Around the World" appeared on the soundtrack to the 2001 film Me Without You.
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