Lazyboy

Producers Johnny Douglas, whose credits include George Michael and Kylie Minogue, teamed with Søren Rasted, co-founder of Aqua, to steer the Lazyboy project. Universal released the November 2004 album Lazyboy TV, which mined and critiqued twenty-first-century pop culture while examining people’s shared hunger for satisfaction in daily living and romance alike. Singers, voiceover performers, and assorted contributors supplied material over layers of samples and understated electronic beats, yielding an overall impression of empathetic observation fired at high speed. Sexual politics surfaced through rapid slogans on “Man Woman (Yin & Yang).” The vocal on “Inhale Positivity” urged listeners to “smile at a stranger on the street.” Over gentle dance rhythms, “Facts of Life” delivered a catalog of unexpected, revealing, and occasionally disquieting statistics and norms. Vocalist Andrea Grant, British actor Christopher Fairbanks (who recited the 1971 Les Crane motivational hit “Desiderata”), and New York City comic Greg Giraldo all took part; Giraldo’s biting tirades supplied the central hook for the widely downloaded track “Underwear Goes Inside the Pants.”