Hotel Cabana

Hotel Cabana is a pop, R&B, soul and hip hop music record, containing "orchestral flourishes" and "Bollywood inflections".[1] Naughty Boy called Hotel Cabana more than an album, it was an audio-visual concept. "I want it to be an album for our time; it has a concept to it, so it's more like a film in some respects." Speaking about putting together the album, he said "I view it like I'm not just a producer – I'm a director too."[2] During an interview with the Watford Observer, Naughty Boy said "It's a very diverse, musically organic album. There's a lot of dance-future music that's going on now." Explaining the "hotel" concept, he said "the album is like a hotel, and just like guests coming to stay, musicians appear on the album. Each song does stand alone, but all together, the album tells a story, it's one guy's journey, a bit like the song "Hotel California", it's a twisted journey. You can visit, but you can never leave, you can listen to the album, but you won't be able to stop."[3]

Hotel Cabana was recorded at Cabana Studios, a recording block located at Ealing Studios in London; Naughty Boy told Sound on Sound magazine that the studio was always called "Cabana" and that naming his debut album Hotel Cabana was in part inspired by the studio.[4] The entire album was produced using Logic Pro and Reason.[5] The album centres predominately around the themes of fame, "involving debates about the tenuous nature of virtue and fidelity."[6] Speaking on how the album was composed, Naughty Boy used piano and live instruments, adding that it was "just the basics. What they would have had in the 70s."[1] While making the album, Naughty Boy was influenced by M.I.A., Tracy Chapman, Joe Goddard, Woodkid and Major Lazer.[2] On 19 August, Naughty Boy appeared on MistaJam's BBC Radio 1Xtra show to talk about the album track-by-track. "Hotel Cabana where the sleepless kids live" was created following several days Naughty Boy and Sandé spent in the studio together.[7]

George the Poet helps to establish the album's hotel concept through, starting with a monologue at the beginning of the set.[8] This is followed by the album's opener, "Welcome to Cabana" with Emeli Sandé and Tinie Tempah which describes Hotel Cabana as a mysterious place "full of drama" and haunted by "sleepless kids".[8] Meanwhile, "Wonder" and "Lifted", both two of eight collaborations with Sandé, experiment with gospel music.[8][9] The latter collaboration contains elements of drum and bass and stadium music.[10] The Independent's Andy Gill also described the production on "Lifted" as a "[Naughty Boy] trademark Funky Drummer variant" with "quirkily looped strings and backing vocals".[6] It was the Sandé and Wretch 32 collaboration, "Pluto", that garnered some of the most positive comments, Gill said "Pluto" best exemplified Naughty Boy's signature sound, which was a "blend of vaunting synthesised strings and shuffling groove carries a two-way argument between Sandé and Wretch 32",[6] while Aizlewood called all of the Sandé collaborations "stellar".[11]

When conceiving the song "Hollywood", Naughty Boy originally considered asking Dame Shirley Bassey to sing the vocals, describing the situation as "epic", but in the end he thought it "would be too much". Upon hearing Gabrielle's song "Out of Reach" on the radio he said "her voice is so unique. It's not technically the best voice, but it stands on its own. It's incredible."[12] Digital Spy's Robert Copsey described the collaboration as "the spookiest of them all", centering on "how fame can be fleeting".[8] "No One's Here to Sleep", a collaboration with Bastille, combines indie music and dance-pop, with soulful vocals from Bastille's lead vocalist Dan Smith.[6] The lyrics center around the paranoia of fame.[8]

Hotel Cabana was first released on 23 August 2013 in Germany,[9] Ireland[13] and Spain[14] by EMI and Universal Music. Its UK release came on 26 August 2013 through Naughty Boy's own production company Naughty Boy Recordings and Virgin EMI,[15] with the producer's official website selling 500 limited edition signed copies of the album.[16] In the following week, Hotel Cabana was released in Spain on 30 August[17] and in Italy on 3 September 2013.[18] It was released in Japan on 9 October through EMI Records Japan,[19] while About.com's Bill Lamb confirmed that Capitol Records would be distributing the album at a later date in the United States.[20]

With the absorption of EMI by Universal Music, and the subsequent reorganisation of record labels, Virgin Records and Capitol Records then released Hotel Cabana in the United States. According to the iTunes store, it was released on 6 May 2014, and includes three new songs: "Never Been the Same", featuring Thabo, "Pardon Me", featuring Tanika and Ava Stokes, and "Home", featuring Romans[21] with the deluxe edition containing the bonus tracks from the international standard edition.[22] "La La La" and "Pardon Me" were available as instant downloads upon pre-ordering the album.[21]

On 12 August 2012, Music Week magazine confirmed that Naughty Boy's debut single would be titled "Wonder", and would feature frequent collaborator Emeli Sandé. A video directed by Nadia Otzen was produced for the song and it was scheduled to be released 30 September 2012.[31] However, the release of "Wonder" was delayed and the single was released 21 October 2012 instead.[32] Upon release, "Wonder" reached number six in Scotland,[33] eight in Ireland[34] and number ten on the UK Singles Chart.[35] Then over six months later, on 17 May 2013, Naughty Boy released "La La La", featuring British vocalist Sam Smith, was released as the album's second single.[36] Upon release, "La La La" became Naughty Boy's biggest hit to date, topping the UK Singles chart and UK Dance Chart.[37] It also reached number three in Ireland,[38] Italy[39] and Scotland[40] and five in the Netherlands.[41] It serves as the album's lead single in the US, where it has peaked at number nineteen, on the Billboard Hot 100, as of 8 April 2014. "Lifted", another collaboration with Sandé, was released as the album's third single on 18 August 2013, preceding the album by a week.[42][43] "Lifted" became Naughty Boy's third top-ten single in Scotland and the UK, reaching number eight in both countries.[44][45] In Ireland, it was slightly less successful, reaching only number twenty-one.[46] "Think About It" featuring Wiz Khalifa and Ella Eyre was released as the album's fourth single on 17 November 2013.[47] "Home", featuring Romans, was released on 20 July 2014 as a single from the US edition of the album.[48]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[49]
Digital Spy	[8]
Gigwise	[50]
The Guardian	[51]
The Independent	[6]
London Evening Standard	[11]
musicOMH	[52]
The Observer	[53]
PopMatters	7/10[54]

The album received generally favourable reviews from music critics. Digital Spy's Robert Copsey gave the album four out of five stars, commenting that "Hotel Cabana succeeds in a task previously thought impossible: giving personality and depth to a features album." In his review, Copsey praised the opening section of the album, but noted that some of the urban-pop was generic and "the concept starts to lose its footing around the halfway mark".[8]

John Aizlewood from the London Evening Standard was confused about what Hotel Cabana was conceptualising but called Naughty Boy's collaborations with Sandé "stellar", praising "Pluto" (also featuring Wretch 32) and "Wonder". Aizlewood said "the result sounds like a compilation album, but a filler-free one where almost every song is capable of standing alone."[11] The Independent's Andy Gill awarded it the "Album of the Week", praising Sandé's performance on the album, described as "an impassioned lead".[6] AllMusic rated it 3.5 out of 5 stars, calling it "unapologetically ostentatious, skillfully constructed pop."[49] The Times rated it 3 out of 5 stars, saying it "proves far more interesting than you might imagine" but was critical of the album's reliance on Sandé and described Ed Sheeran as "her twin in tedium, bleating away".[55]

However, not all of the reception was positive, with The Observer's Kitty Empire describing the album as predictable and "Naughty? Hardly." During her review, Empire said "Hotel Cabana sounds as you would expect: homegrown, high-end urban pop that over-conceptualises the dangers of fame." She praised the Ella Eyre and Wiz Khalifa collaboration "Think About It" but said the remainder of the album was full of "disparate voices [that] give this album the disjointed feel of a showreel."[53] musicOMH noted the album had "a fair few missteps", specifically mentioning Ed Sheeran's contribution as "dull as dishwater – and even that maybe going to [sic] easy on it", concluding that the album was not "coherent".[52]

On 28 August 2013, in the mid-week charts update, the Official Charts Company revealed that Hotel Cabana was a contender to top the UK Albums Chart. At the half-way mark, it was just 3,600 copies behind the mid-week leader Hail to the King by US rock band Avenged Sevenfold.[56] On 1 September 2013, Hotel Cabana made its Scottish Albums Chart debut at number five and its UK Albums Chart debut at number two.[57][58] On the Irish Albums Chart it debuted at number twenty-five.[59] In Switzerland, the album debuted at number thirty-four but rose to a new peak of number eight in its second week on the chart.[60] Similarly in Belgium, on the Flanders Album Chart it debuted and number eighty-five and 120 on the Wallonia Albums Chart; in its second week it rose to number seventy-four and number seventy on the Flanders and Wallonia album charts respectively.[61][62]

Recording

• Recorded at Cabana Studios (Ealing Studios) in Ealing, West London[4]
• Mixing/overdubbing at Genesis Sound Studios, Fisher Lane Farm in Surrey, UK[4]
• Audio mastering by Stuart Hawkes at Metropolis Mastering Studios in London, UK[64]

Creative[64]

• Tim Blacksmith – executive producer
• Riki Bleau – executive producer
• Danny D – executive producer
• Check Morris – artwork
• Dan Sanders – commissioner

Vocals[64]

Musicians and technicians[64]

• Hotel-cabana.com