World Party was a musical group, predominantly the solo project of its sole consistent member, the songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Karl Wallinger.

[4] At various times, World Party also featured Guy Chambers, David Catlin-Birch, future Oasis drummer Chris Sharrock, Jeff Trott, Amanda Kramer and John Turnbull.

World Party produced several hit singles during the late 1980s and early 1990s including "Ship of Fools", "Way Down Now", "Put the Message in the Box" and "Is It Like Today?".

By the end of this period, he'd also mastered all of the instruments needed for him to become a one-man rock band, as well as the arts of record production and synthesizer programming.

Having contributed one organ part to the band's debut album, and many more piano and organ parts to the second (A Pagan Place)[4][13] as well as playing on tour, his additional skills made him the perfect ally for Waterboys leader Mike Scott when Scott wished to expand the sound of the band for their third album, 1985's This Is the Sea.

Wallinger co-produced many of the album tracks, adding assorted synthesizer and sampler arrangements as well as backing vocals, synth bass, percussion, and piano and organ.

[2][6] The first World Party album, Private Revolution, was recorded in a dilapidated former rectory in Woburn, which Wallinger had moved into after quitting both London and The Waterboys.

[2][6] Inspired by Prince, Wallinger recorded the majority of the instruments (guitars, bass, keyboards, drums, samplers) by himself, as well as singing lead vocals and handling programming and production.

To create the illusion of a full band, Wallinger credited his own instrumental parts to a variety of imaginary players with whimsical names, including "Millennium Mills", "Rufus Dove" and "Will Towyn".

Relocating to a 32-track studio in London (which he called "Seaview"), Wallinger began work on the second World Party album, Goodbye Jumbo.

"[6] On some of the tracks, Wallinger collaborated with fellow former Waterboy and songwriter Guy Chambers, who had originally joined the project in 1986 for live and studio work.

[6] Sessions were lengthy, carried out during the night and fuelled by copious amounts of marijuana,[6] with Chambers later remembering "if you worked with Karl you had to get into his headspace.

"[6] Released on 24 April 1990, Goodbye Jumbo was voted "album of the year" by Q magazine[6] and was nominated for a Grammy Award for "best alternative music performance" in the US.

[2] Instead, Ensign label boss Nigel Grainge cancelled a planned tour support slot with Neil Young in favour of further recording.

[2] During the lengthy recording process, Chambers set up his own band The Lemon Trees in 1992, continuing with them in parallel to his World Party work until 1995.

In 1994, World Party recorded "When You Come Back to Me" for the Reality Bites soundtrack, influenced by David Bowie's 1975 song "Young Americans".

[6] In 2012, he explained "basically my last fax or whatever it was to EMI was literally just like "fuck off"... At that point I just said "tell them we don’t want any more money, just say give me back the catalogue and I'll walk and we'll call it a day".

Getting control of that back was the essence of being able to survive really, because since then I've had tracks in films and in television programmes and the money's come to me instead of a black hole as it was with EMI.

This, in turn, led to Williams re-recording an Egyptology track, "She's the One" (which had won Wallinger an Ivor Novello Award in 1997),[2] and releasing it as a single in November 1999.

He would later admit to having experienced "ongoing bitterness" and that "the song had a much better time than me, popping off to the Brits while I was at home eating crackers dipped in water".

[21] Plans were made for touring in spring 2001, only to be cut short by Wallinger sufferering a brain aneurysm in February 2001 while cycling with his son on a Center Parcs holiday in Suffolk.

[2] With his back catalogue reclaimed from EMI, a distribution deal was agreed (via his own Seaview label) with Universal, and he played his first live show in a decade at the South by Southwest festival in Texas, US.

In 2012, World Party released a new five-CD/70-song collection of new songs, live recordings and cover versions titled Arkeology to critical acclaim.

He claimed "I’ve got twenty-odd years of material... What I’m trying to do is make everything the most contemporary version of things, rather than go back and just say, "How can I finish these songs off and put them out?"

[28] Wallinger cited influences such as the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys, Junior Walker, Neil Young and Prince.