After releasing albums with the Auteurs and as Baader Meinhof, in early 1997, musician Luke Haines formed Black Box Recorder with John Moore and Sarah Nixey.

The country folk, easy listening and pop album is named for Graham Greene's 1935 novel eponymous novel, and has been compared to the work of Portishead and Young Marble Giants.

The songs' lyrics criticize the mundane experience of living and growing up in post-Restoration England, and explore the themes of single mothers and teenage sex.

Bickerton, who wanted more musicians to help the band in a recording studio, recruited Haines and former the Jesus and Mary Chain member John Moore.

Hut Records, which had released Haines' earlier work, paid the band an advance fee, allowing them to move sessions to the basement of Milo Studios in Hoxton Square, London.

As they ran out of money for recording, connections through The Jesus and Mary Chain saw sessions moved to that band's studio The Drugstore in Walworth Road.

In two three-day sessions they recorded "It's Only the End of the World", "Child Psychology", "I. C. One Female", "Swinging", "Kidnapping an Heiress", "Hated Sunday", "Brutality" and "Jackie 60".

Sessions then returned to Milo Studios, where Vinall mixed "Ideal Home"; during a Sunday afternoon, Haines and Moore mooted the idea of recording a cover of "Up Town Top Ranking" (1977) by Althea & Donna.

[4] The music of England Made Me has been described as country folk,[9] easy listening[1] and pop,[10] and recalls the sound of Young Marble Giants.

[9] Pitchfork contributor Michael Sandlin said Black Box Recorder deliver a "mildly morose but slightly tongue-in-cheek Sylvia Plath-meets-Paul McCartney pop sensibility" with elements of the work of Portishead.

[4] Moore said Black Box Recorder proposed calling the album Mine Camp and Goodbye Beachy Head before landing on England Made Me.

[4] The Quietus's Jude Rogers wrote Graham Greene's 1935 novel England Made Me, which explores a "disreputable man wrestling with his conscience", gave the album its title.

[15] "England Made Me" starts with Nixey inflicting pain on insects;[16] for the rest of the song, she stays off boredom by contemplating staging a murder.

[17] Moore called it a "paean to Graham Greene and British seediness";[4] Niles Baranowski of Consumable Online said on "New Baby Boom", Nixey equates "teen pregnancy [a]s some sort of bad hair day".

[4] In a review for NME, journalist Kitty Empire called "Up Town Top Ranking" a "warped attempt to reflect Britain's ethnic diversity (possibly)",[21] while Fletcher said Nixey changed the song from a "boastful feminine going-out anthem into a morning-after lament".

[13] One of these is a cover of Terry Jacks' 1974 hit "Seasons in the Sun", on which according to Spin's Joshua Clover, Nixey sounds "as if she's singing the grocery list",[16] while Ink 19 writer Matthew Moyer said the band "pervert [the song] to its most evil and base nature".

[28] The album's cover features a 1973 photograph of wrestler Adrian Street and his miner father taken by Dennis Hutchinson at Beynon's Colliery in Blaina, Wales.

[27] The cover of the US version, which Jetset Records issued on 6 July 1999,[33] depicts a girl in a bed who appears "bored and morbidly introspective – [it] tells you most everything you need to know" about the band, according to Sandlin.

[11] The US version includes extra tracks "Wonderful Life", "Seasons in the Sun", "Factory Radio" and "Lord Lucan Is Missing";[28] Haines said he struggled to get the album issued in the US due to its highly English nature.

[12] The release of "Child Psychology" as the lead single from England Made Me was originally planned for April 1998[5] but was postponed to 4 May; "Girl Singing in the Wreckage" and "Seasons in the Sun" were included as B-sides.

[6] Because the song was released in the US shortly after the Columbine High School massacre, disc jockeys played the chorus backwards to avoid causing offence.

The CD version featured "Factory Radio" and "Child Psychology" as the B-sides,[28] while the seven-inch vinyl edition included a cover of "Lord Lucan Is Missing" (1980) by the Dodgems.

[36] The video for "England Made Me", directed by Sonja Phillips,[4] opens with an interior shot of an office building with staff members miming to the song.

[27] "Wonderful Life", "Seasons in the Sun", "Factory Radio", "Lord Lucan Is Missing", a remix of Uptown Top Ranking" and the music videos for "Child Psychology" and " England Made Me" were included on the compilation album The Worst of Black Box Recorder (2001).

[10] Rolling Stone writer James Hunter said Black Box Recorder are "totally of their time, ignoring guitar rock on the one hand and dance music on the other, and insisting on composure and clarity.

Hatherley considered England Made Me to be in a "different league entirely" due to the substitution of Haines' "perpetually irritated rasp with the perfect vowels" of Nixey.

[13] According to Moyer, the "innate beauty of Black Box Recorder is that Nixey can sing so sweet and innocently about kidnappings, murder, and the decay of Swinging London".

Swihart said the songs Haines and Moore compose are "cleanly stylized in a way that conceals the raw-nerved lives their characters exist in but are also reflective of the internalization of such relentless barrenness" as the band "seemingly approach their subjects without judgment".

[47] Sandlin wrote the band "just keep churning out more quaint songs about resigned depression" and after a while, the listener is "left with empty sorrow and overly reflective gobbledygook".