[1] The majority of the songs on Rings Around the World were written by Rhys on guitar and piano with keyboardist Cian Ciaran contributing "[A] Touch Sensitive" and "Miniature" as well as collaborating with other members of the band on "Run!

"[1] Rings... was originally going to be called Text Messaging is Destroying the Pub Quiz as We Know It[nb 1] and released as a double album containing 75–90 minutes of material with Rhys stating that he was "into the excess of it, that was the whole point".

[6][11] Recording sessions began in April 2000 at Monnow Valley Studios in Rockfield, Monmouthshire, Wales with co-producer Chris Shaw and engineer Eric Tew.

Bearsville was chosen because of its drum and live rooms, which the band felt were desirable as they were using more microphones to capture audio for the surround sound mix included on the DVD version of the album than they would normally when simply recording in stereo.

[6] Rhys wrote many of the tracks on the album on acoustic guitar and piano and brought them to the band either as fully formed songs or as ideas which the group would then jam out.

[13] McCartney is alleged to have performed a similar role over thirty years earlier, chewing celery to form the percussion track of The Beach Boys song "Vegetables" from the album Smiley Smile.

[5] The Super Furry Animals had met the ex-Beatle at the NME Awards when a drunk Ciaran persuaded him to let them remix some Beatles material, resulting in 2000's Liverpool Sound Collage album.

[14] Former Velvet Underground member John Cale, a "sort of childhood hero" of Rhys's, also makes an appearance on the album, playing piano on the song "Presidential Suite".

[9] Rings Around the World is "very cinematic" and falls somewhere between the Super Furry Animals' 1999 album, the "instantaneous, easy to grasp, and almost disposable" Guerrilla, and its "exact opposite", 2000's Mwng.

to tunes such as The Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset", Dennis Wilson's "Forever" and Jack Bruce's "Theme for an Imaginary Western" while The Big Issue called "Sidewalk Serfer Girl" "surf-punk electro pop".

[20][21] Elsewhere on the album the eclectic range of sounds continues from the trip hop of "[A] Touch Sensitive" to the Status Quo-esque "(Drawing) Rings Around the World" and the "electro country rock" of "Run!

[22][23] The track "Receptacle For the Respectable" reflects the eclecticism of the album as it "undergoes a complete personality change" over the course of its four-minute thirty-two-second duration, veering from prog rock to death metal.

[3] Critics have referred to the album as "thematically eccentric" and lacking an "overarching theme" with The Independent claiming it leaps "from religious fundamentalists to modern telecommunications and the old Hollywood star system with disorienting glee".

[3] "Presidential Suite", about former United States and Russian presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin, is "a reflective look back at the decadent nineties" during the Lewinsky scandal and asks if "we need to know if he really came inside her mouth?".

Bunford printed out several essays from these websites and gave them to Rhys who used them as inspiration for his lyrics along with his own recollections of watching Christian television shows during the band's American tours.

[6] The DVD release received a '15' certificate from the British Board of Film Classification, meaning that no-one under the age of 15 could buy or rent it in the United Kingdom.

[3] Rhys has stated that the Super Furry Animals felt that fans placed too much emphasis on the videos on Rings Around the World rather than concentrating on the music, as a result of which the band used "really bland images" on the DVD release of their next album Phantom Power.

[29] In America Rings Around the World was released on 19 March 2002 by XL Recordings with a bonus CD featuring seven tracks which appear on the DVD version of the album.

[32] Brent DiCrescenzo of Pitchfork stated that the album's combination of "paisley, sun-heated, and layered" music with Gruff Rhys's "satirical and heartfelt lyrics" makes it "timeless" and the band's best record.

[24] Uncut praised its "accessible and adventurous" nature,[10] while The Independent opined that Rings Around the World "represents a quantum jump beyond the Furries' previous work" and described it as "one of the year's most engrossing – and, crucially, most entertaining – albums".

[40][41] Tiny Mix Tapes called Rings Around the World "one of the, if not the, best releases of 2002", describing it as a "mixture of sugar pop of yesteryear and modern Britpop" resulting in a "near perfect" album.

[25] Writing for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine praised the record, claiming that it "shines brightly" compared to the "dead world of mainstream and indie rock in 2001" but expressed disappointment that it is "the first SFA album not to progress from its predecessor".

[4] Rob Brunner of Entertainment Weekly claimed that at its best, the album "recalls a lost Brian Wilson-style psychedelic marvel", but went on to state that it is "at times marred by forced eccentricity", citing the "heavy metal gorgon voice booming through 'Receptacle for the Respectable'" and the "awful lite-rock homage" "Juxtapozed with U" as examples.

[18] Robert Christgau of The Village Voice singled out "Tradewinds" as a "choice cut",[44] indicating a "good song on an album that isn't worth your time or money.