Mobile Orchestra by Owl City

Mobile Orchestra is the fifth studio album by American electronica project Owl City, which was released on July 10, 2015. The album debuted at number 11 on the Billboard 200. This is the project's last album under Republic Records before releasing subsequent albums independently. Adam Young collaborated with several artists to provide additional vocals for the other songs on the album: English artist Sarah Russell for the track "Thunderstruck", country musician Jake Owen for the country pop song "Back Home", Avicii's "Wake Me Up!" vocalist Aloe Blacc for the graduation-themed song "Verge", and pop rock band Hanson for the song "Unbelievable". In 2014, Owl City released an EP called Ultraviolet and released "Beautiful Times" as the lead single. Following the release, Young stated his intent to release a steady "series of EPs" in 2014 rather than one larger recording. On October 7, 2014, Young released two new songs simultaneously, "You're Not Alone" (featuring Britt Nicole) and "Tokyo" (featuring Sekai no Owari). The former would eventually become part of the international edition of the album while the latter would become the fourth track of the Japanese edition. The song "Up All Night" from the extended play Ultraviolet was included on the Japanese edition of the album as well. On April 19, 2015, Owl City made an announcement stating that a new full-length album would be released in the summer. On May 12, 2015, the album name was revealed along with its artwork, track listing and release date was announced despite his intentions to release a series of EPs instead of a full-length album. In an interview with Billboard, he revealed the intent behind the name of the album saying, "The title is kind of a pun on the fact that I have a hard time switching off the creative side of my brain. Therefore, I'm always working on some lyric or some rhyme or some melody that won't leave me alone. The blessing and the curse of how all this amazing technology now fits in a little box, in a laptop. The blessing and the curse is that you can always be working on something, literally anywhere. On the airplane, I'll probably do that later today. I'll probably be on the flight, putting my headphones on, just messing around. You can be on buses and trains. The idea is that, with all the technology, one guy sitting in front of a laptop can create the sound of an 80-person symphony. All the moving parts and all the bells and whistles. That's the cool imagery for what I do." After the song was previewed on ESPN's "Draft Academy" on May 5, it was announced that "Verge", featuring Aloe Blacc, would be released on May 14 as the album's lead single. A lyric video of "Verge" was later published on Owl City's Vevo channel on YouTube on May 13, 2015, along with an announcement for an upcoming music video. The music video for the song premiered via Yahoo! Entertainment on May 28, 2015. The song peaked at number 44 on the Japan Hot 100. On June 5, 2015, "My Everything" was released as the second single. The music video for the song premiered that same day via VEVO and YouTube. The song peaked at number 22 on the US Hot Christian Songs chart. The song was serviced to Christian radio on July 31, 2015. On June 26, 2015, "Unbelievable", featuring Hanson, was released. An animated music video for the song was released on June 29, 2015. The song peaked at number 20 on the US Hot Christian Songs chart. Mobile Orchestra debuted and peaked at number 11 on the Billboard 200 selling 16,000 copies first week. The album also debuted at number five on the Canadian Albums Chart with first week sales of under 2,000 units. The album received mixed reviews from music critics before its release. In response to negative feedback, Young said in an interview with Billboard that, "There's definitely a trick. With anything that you do, for anybody, there's always going to be somebody who loves it, somebody who hates it, somebody in the middle. I feel like I read a stat once that was like, "If you put something out, there's 5% of everyone who loves it, 5% who hates it, and 90% of people who just kind of check it out and move on." So, it's definitely a trick to not dwell on the good or the bad. In terms of reading reviews online and things like that, I feel like I've nailed down a super healthy approach at that stuff. So, I will definitely check it out a little bit, but the moment it feels like I'm dwelling on it too much or thinking about it too much, I step back and remember at the end of the day, I've just got to do the best job that I know how to do and just be sincere and be honest, try to do the right thing. At the end of the day, people will talk and that's totally cool and I'll just keep fighting the good fight." ℗ 2015 Republic Records, a division of UMG Recordings, Inc.