Sleeping with Ghosts


Sleeping with Ghosts is the fourth studio album by British alternative rock band Placebo. It was recorded from late 2002 to early 2003 and released on 1 April 2003 by record labels Virgin and Hut.
Sleeping with Ghosts reached number 11 in the UK Albums Chart, and received a generally favourable reaction from music critics.

Content

Frontman Brian Molko, who is known to be a fan of the band Sonic Youth, references lyrics from their album Sister on "Plasticine".
The album has several songs based on a theme of relationships, such as relationships that end badly, power struggles in relationships or the idea that some are meant to be eternal soulmates. Brian Molko told Kerrang! magazine: "I'm looking back to what's happened in my past emotional decade, trying to understand it. Trying to exorcise the ghosts and the demons of relationships past. It's the old cliché of it being therapeutic but it does work for me in that way."
Another interview has Molko explaining:
The album title's about carrying the ghosts of your relationships with you, to the point where sometimes a smell or a situation or an item of clothing they bought brings a person back. For me it's about the relationship that you have with your memories. They inhabit your dreams sometimes. There can be a lot in the future that's gonna remind you of the ghost of relationships past. So I see the album as a collection of short stories about a handful of relationships. Most of them mine. In a way writing the songs helps me to get a lot of the nasty feelings off my chest and put them in a box, and therefore have a bit more of an objective discourse with those emotions because you've done something positive with them, you've rid yourself of them.

Release

Sleeping with Ghosts was released on 1 April 2003. The CD came with the Copy Control protection system in some regions. It reached number 11 in the UK Albums Chart.
A Special Edition version of the album was released on 22 September 2003 worldwide, featuring a diverse selection of cover versions that the band had recorded in previous years. This was re-released as a download-only album in 2007 under the name Covers. This is their last album released under Hut.

Reception

Sleeping with Ghosts received a moderately favourable reception from critics, and currently holds an approval rating of 64/100 on review aggregator website Metacritic.
Michael Idov of Pitchfork wrote "No peaks, no gorges, just a steady oscillation between adequate and inspired. Sleeping with Ghosts is a remarkably level collection of guitar pop, simultaneously less glammy and less pungent than Placebo's earlier stuff." Mojo wrote "There's some terrific and accessible stuff here but the result is still an album that retreads old Placebo themes." Q magazine called it "spikily brilliant".

Track listing

All lyrics written by Brian Molko, Stefan Olsdal & Steve Hewitt

Charts and certifications

;Charts
ChartPosition
Australian Albums Chart11
Austrian Albums Chart6
Belgian Flanders Albums Chart4
Belgian Wallonia Albums Chart1
Danish Albums Chart28
Dutch Albums Chart19
Finnish Albums Chart14
French Albums Chart1
German Albums Chart2
Greek Albums Chart4
Irish Albums Chart14
Italian Albums Chart6
New Zealand Albums Chart37
Norwegian Albums Chart12
Polish Albums Chart10
Portuguese Albums Chart4
Swedish Albums Chart14
Swiss Albums Chart3
UK Albums Chart11

Certifications and sales

Personnel

; Placebo
; Additional personnel
; Technical personnel