Written during the band's sell-out UK tour of Spring 2003 - and in LA - the album finds Busted spreading their creative wings while remaining true to the sound that has made them one of the most important new pop acts of the past decade. It's a dizzying collection of songs to get through in one go - so here, as an accompaniment, is your definitive track-by-track guide to the album..
1. AIR HOSTESS
This is a song about an air hostess. "A damn good song," is James's summary. One of the best Busted songs ever committed to record, would be the addition of anyone with functioning ears, especially since it ends with the sound of an aeroplane taking off. It also includes the astonishing line "I messed my pants when we flew over France". James was recently told off by an air hostess for mimicking her safety procedure hand movements ("She used the line, 'You need to get out more'," he grimaces), while Charlie is convinced that air hostesses on Virgin Atlantic "must have fitness tests because they're always really fit". NB: None of the boys are in the mile high club, though Charlie claims to have got up to something or other on a train between London and Yorkshire.
2. CRASHED THE WEDDING
You'll know this one by now - but do you know about Gordon Street? "It's from Wayne's World 2!" James grins. "There's a bit where Wayne tries to stop a wedding, and asks Charlton Heston where Gordon Street is. When Wayne eventually crashes the wedding it's done in a parody of The Graduate, which we parodied in the video for our first single." This, media analysts will agree, is a postmodern triumph. "I've actually never seen The Graduate on film," Matt admits, "but I did see it in the theatre. Jerry Hall was Mrs Robinson. Result." In case you're wondering, Matt's favourite bit in the song is the line "I stole my girl away from everybody gathered there that day". "It's genius!" he cries. "'Gathered there that day'! It's what the vicar says!"
3. WHO'S DAVID
Like many of the songs on 'A Present For Everyone' this track, a ready-made pop-rock classic, was written while the band were on tour during the spring. Charlie recalls how the song came together: "It was weird," he says. "James and Tom (from labelmates McFly) wrote this together in a room at the Lowry Hotel in Manchester. All my mates were there that night so I was getting pissed up downstairs in the bar. Every now and again I'd run upstairs and burst into Tom and James' room, and each time I'd find the song at a different stage. The final time I stumbled through the door, at about 8am, the song was finished." The song's lyrics deal with infidelity, jealousy and paranoia, and the story unfolding through each verse and chorus leads the singer to go through his girlfriend's mobile phone to discover a series of messages from some guy called David... And who, may we ask, is David? "It's nobody in particular," James says, before providing a glimpse into the creative mind by revealing: "I just chose 'David' because it rhymes with the word 'invaded'."
4. SHE WANTS TO BE ME
Imagine you've got a psycho girlfriend, right, but imagine that instead of just being a living nightmare she also begins taking on your personality. That's where we find this thrashy number. "We said after the first album that we really wanted to work with The Matrix," James explains. "And before we knew it we were on our way over to the States. They knew about us anyway - Scott from The Matrix had seen our videos in France and told us that he had an inkling we'd end up working together." James likes the way this song "goes down the plughole" at the end.
5. 3AM
Along with 'Air Hostess' this is one of Charlie's favourite tracks on 'A Present For Everyone', and it's not difficult to see (or hear) why. A soaring, epic tune of sleepless nights and loveless relationships, '3am' cements Busted's ability to knock out solid, emotive rock songs just as easily as they come up with high concept pop epics. "Everyone who has relationship problems seems to find themselves thinking about things at 3am," James explains. "It's not the night before, it's not the next day, and you're stuck there worrying. That's when you know things are serious." Adds Matt: "It's usually the point when I'm thinking, 'Shit. I need to get some sleep'."
6. FALLIN 4 YOU
Top three informative points about this song: James reckons it's a "piss-about song". Matt says that it contains "some very interesting 'Na-na-na's. Our na-na's aren't as good as Blink-182's, but they're the best British na-na's of 2003." Charlie adds that this song is the 'Dawson's Geek' of 'A Present For Everyone' - "It's feelgood, and not too serious." All good points, well made.
7. THAT THING YOU DO
The first song written for 'A Present For Everyone', this isn't a cover of the song from the film of the same name, or even inspired by the film itself - but the lads do think that the track, with its massive Sum 41-style harmonies and flailing guitars, has a bit of a Sixties feel. "I wrote this with James and Tom," Charlie recalls, "and we almost gave it to McFly to record - but in the end James and I liked it so much that we decided to keep it for ourselves!" If you ask the boys which 60s band they'd like to be you can expect a long argument involving The Beatles and the Beach Boys - but if you combine the sounds of both those bands and throw a bit of Busted into the mix you'll get a song sounding just like 'That Thing You Do'.
8. OVER NOW
For Charlie, the magic in this song was being in the studio and watching the song take shape, from the initial acoustic version which was so subtle that it took James ages to convince the band of how it would eventually sound, to the final, flourishing finished product. James explains: "This is one of those songs which works so well on a musical level - I can't imagine that it'll be something we'll perform acoustically, because the sound which makes it so special is one which came together in the studio." For this song, 'Nerdy' and 'Who's David', the boys commissioned a 24-piece string section to add some magnificent orchestral flourishes. "I love strings," Charlie 'reveals'. "This song would work perfectly in an emotional movie scene where someone is sitting on the edge of their bed, thinking about shit."
9. FAKE
As a big fan of Robbie Williams, Matt says he was thrilled to write this track with Robbie's ex-collaborator, one-man-hit- machine Guy Chambers. "I'd already written bits of this song," Matt explains, "but I thought the chorus needed a bit of work. I became quite attached to the song so when the opportunity to work on it with Guy came up I was made up. It turned out great." The topic of the song? "It's about having sex with your lady and she fakes an orgasm. You're, like, 'Oh no! I'm never going to be able to have sex again!" Has Matt himself ever faked an orgasm? "Er, no."
10. MEET YOU THERE
Another on-the-road composition, 'Meet You There' is an anthemic, stripped-down gem. "We were in Dublin and we'd had enough of being in the bar," James says, "so Charlie and I just went up to a room, picked up our guitars and banged it out." The song was finished in forty minutes. This song's got Busted written through it like a stick of eyebrow-flavoured rock, but like so many other songs on the album also takes the band's sound in a new direction. "We really downplayed the production on this one," James adds, "so that nothing smothered the song." In fact the track could have been recorded in one take, had it not been for the fact that James plays guitar and piano on the song and, like so many of us, only has one set of hands. For the record, Charlie's favourite line in this song is: "Where's the world that doesn't care? Maybe I can meet you there." And quite right too.
11. WHY
A sensational ballad written by Charlie and his brother, Will. "Some of our fans will be horrified to discover that you can't jump to this song," Matt chuckles, "but that's no bad thing. I think it might come as a surprise to the people who don't listen to the kind of music Charlie listens to - and there's only about 70 of them, including Charlie and the people actually in the bands - but it sounds so good on the album." 'Why' is a great example of how well each of the boys' own musical influences make themselves felt on 'A Present For Everyone'. "We all have common ground," James nods, "but it's great to be able to do these things and run free."
12. LONER IN LOVE
This track, with its classic mid-80s photostory title, concerns dreaming about a girl in your sleep - and then making the mistake of telling her boyfriend. His way of dealing with it is to smash your teeth in, leaving you with no girlfriend and, more pressingly, no teeth. Lessons to be learned from this? "Don't tell double-hard people you fancy their bird," Matt shrugs. The opening line, "I wake up scared to phone her", originally had a rather different twist. "When James wrote that it started off as 'I wake up with a boner'," Matt laughs. "But Charlie and I both thought that was a slightly ridiculous way to begin a pop song, and decided to change it. There's still a line about 'tears of morning glory' though, so you can read what you like into that..." Crikey!
13. BETTER THAN THIS
Another of Matt's collaborations with Guy Chambers, 'Better Than This' centres on that difficult point in any relationship: "You don't want it to end," Matt says, "but it's beginning to get on your tits. It's all gone boring. Things begin to annoy you. You're just thinking,. 'It has to get better than this'. Sometimes it does and sometimes, well, it doesn't." Matt freely admits that the things he does to annoy girlfriends include: Drumming on tables, going 'Uh?' instead of 'Pardon?', and getting red hair dye all over pillow cases.
14. CAN'T BREAK THROUGH
Have you ever heard of a band called Neve? Not many people have - they were American, they sounded a bit like Matchbox 20, and they made one of James' favourite ever albums. While Busted were out in LA working with The Matrix, James found himself at a loose end in the evenings and made arrangements to meet the band's key songwriter. The result is 'Can't Break through' - a touching, haunting number which features the album's best guitar solo. "It might be a weird ambition to want to work with someone who no-one's ever heard of," James shrugs, "but to me Neve were up there with Michael Jackson. To have come out of those sessions with a song this great is a massive thrill."
15. NERDY
Like 'Loser Kid' on the band's first album, 'Nerdy' is a classic geek-done-good anthem. Charlie reckons it should be dedicated to American Pie star Jason Biggs - the chorus lyrics are based around the poem a nerdy kid writes on a toilet door. "Everyone comes in and reads it," James explains, "and suddenly everyone's like, 'Who's written it? What, it was that nerdy kid?' And he becomes a legend." Matt, meanwhile is concerned that his first line in the song is a little too feminine - but as James points out, "it's a very sensitive song. Matt isn't alone in his nambiness". "Great Rod Stewart-esque intro," Charlie adds.