Winning Days - History

History

In May 2003, the band became one of the last clients of Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, New York with Rob Schnapf again on production. While Craig Nicholls had talked of having a highly produced album, he told the Australian edition of Rolling Stone in March 2004 that they decided to stick to a less-is-more philosophy. "I wanted it to be — in my head — something grand, with big ideas and that vision sort of thing. But at the same time, that doesn't mean that something can't be special if it's just simple. Because I think that the songs are the main thing". The album received much criticism upon release due to the lack of truly new material, as many of the songs were written before Highly Evolved was even recorded, and some songs had appeared as B-sides to older singles.

"Fuck The World" (later abbreviated to F.T.W.) was the first song released from The Vines' second album Winning Days and was released on 15 December 2003, three months prior to the album's release. It was released digitally and physically only as a white 7" inch vinyl single with the song on both sides. Although it was the first song released from Winning Days it is not considered the first single, merely a taster song. The band played "Fuck The World" numerous times during their 2002/2003 'Highly Evolved' tour so it was the song fans would have been most familiar with. The song's title was altered to "F.T.W." by their record label at the time for the album due to its explicit content. The single cover resembles the cover of the Who album Live at Leeds.

The song is sarcastic in nature despite what its title seems to imply. During interviews given by lead singer Craig Nicholls in 2004 he stated "I definitely think the world is a good place, but maybe it would be better if people didn't hate so much and kill animals. At the same time, it's like, whatever. It's just a planet, that's all."

The next single "Ride" was released on 8 March 2004, although it wasn't a big chart success, "Ride" is one of the band's best known songs because it was featured in a number of advertisements, including commercials for Apple's iPod, Nissan, American Chopper, NASCAR Hot Pass, WKCF and Split Second: Velocity. It did however reach #94 on Triple J's Hottest 100 of 2004.

The third and final single, "Winning Days" was released on 24 May 2004.