When The World Comes Down - Composition and Recording

Composition and Recording

The All-American Rejects first began writing material for what would become When the World Comes Down at the end of December 2006, when they wrapped up their Tournado tour. In spite of this, it took the band nearly a year to get into the studio, with shows and tours frequently being offered. Twelve songs were completed for the album, a process that took over two years. The first song written for the record was the album opener, "I Wanna". The song took over six months to record, in studio as well as a tour bus. "I Wanna" was written in Florida, followed by the rock ballad titled "Back To Me". Also written on a tour bus was the song "Breakin'", which came together from many different ideas circulating through the quartet. Two important tracks on When the World Comes Down, "Gives You Hell" and "Another Heart Calls", were written during a road trip to Vancouver.

In an interview with She Knows Entertainment, Ritter commented "I think When the World Comes Down has been a journey. I was 23 when I started writing this record. I'm 24 now. I guess...people say when you graduate college you figure out who you are. If I had graduated college, this would be that moment – now. I think I was most questioning life when I was getting off the road with Move Along and this record was therapy for me. It's everything I needed it to be for me."

The second track on the album, "Fallin' Apart", was recorded during the band's escape into the mountains of Georgia. In Rabun County, "Fallin' Apart" was experimented with and played around with before achieving the final product, a process described by singer/bassist Tyson Ritter as "Old School". Also written in Rabun County, was the song "Mona Lisa". The song's title originates from Ritter's view of the song, as the band's perfect, simple work of art. Online music stores have since tagged "(When the World Comes Down)" onto the title, since this phrase is taken from the song itself. "Mona Lisa" was tracked live in studio, which was a first for The All-American Rejects.

Many components of When the World Comes Down was recorded at the famed Skywalker Ranch, in San Rafael, California. There at the large John Williams scoring room, the gang vocals for "Gives You Hell" were recorded, as well as three separate drum tracks for songs such as "Real World".

The 16-piece orchestra featured on When the World Comes Down was recorded at Warner Brothers Studios, Burbank, California, on the eastwood scoring stage. Here, orchestration for the tracks "Another Heart Calls", "Sunshine", and "Real World" was recorded. The orchestra is the most evident in "Sunshine", being a main component of the song.

Most of all other material on the album was recorded at Barefoot Studios, owned by the album's producer, Eric Valentine. Here songs were finished such as the song "Believe". After one take of the drum track, two other drum parts were completed by the end of the day. To drummer Chris Gaylor's dismay, the first version was originally chosen. Another song, "Damn Girl", was created around a chorus that Ritter had in mind from the start. The song begins with a dual intro with rhythm guitarist Mike Kennerty using an electric guitar, and Tyson Ritter on a synthesizer. "The Wind Blows" was a song originally written for pop singer Gwen Stefani. It was turned down, but later transformed into a vital link for the climax of When the World Comes Down. After a 30-second track of silence, the hidden track "Sunshine", written in San Francisco, plays abruptly. The song doesn't include drums, a position taken by percussion instruments such as shakers, and features an orchestration.

An acknowledgment to the album regarding to the recording process is the overall sound quality of the album. Many fans and audiophiles alike have noticed that most of the songs on the album are recorded and mixed well, the album is agreeably not engaged in Loudness War, a modern recording technique which maximizes the overall loudness of the track on the expense of less punch, clarity and dynamics. Using music recording and editing software such as the freely available Audacity, one can see that the waveform of the song "Gives You Hell" and many other tracks on the album shows soft and loud parts with many "peaks and dips" which suggests punch and clarity of the instruments, which is rare among modern rock recordings. The track "Another Heart Calls" starts off very soft and gradually gets louder towards the end of the track, proving that almost no or little "loudness maximizing" has been used.