Since I Saw You Last

Background

Following the success of a series of solo concerts over the previous two years, Barlow announced plans to release his first solo studio album in fourteen years. The album was released on 25 November 2013, to be followed by a live tour in 2014. The album was confirmed to feature a duet with Elton John on the track Face to Face on 24 September 2013. Regarding "Let Me Go", Barlow said, "I've always liked folky, acoustic music, but I've never fully explored it. I turned back time and was listening to Johnny Cash and early Elton John before I wrote 'Let Me Go'. I'm 42; I don't want to do urban or dance music. I love Mumford & Sons—it's good, English music, but let's be honest, they got it off Johnny Cash too."

Barlow cites that after the release of Twelve Months, Eleven Days, he stopped singing as he walked away from the limelight. He said, "I never even sang in my own studio; I was telling myself [that] I don't need to be an artist anymore; I started as a songwriter." However, after the success of the Take That reunion, he felt that he had to face his demons and right the wrongs he felt took hold of his last full studio album. He said, "The one thing I was dreading was that the last album would be on my shoulder the whole time I made this one, but it wasn't—it was flushed out really quickly. I’m not haunted by that time. My experience 14 years ago was completely different from now. The last album I made was so laden with people telling me who I should sound like that I listen back now and think 'Who's that?', but Since I Saw You Last was easy to make; there's a lot of my life on this record."

Singles

Commercial performance

The album debuted at number two on the UK Albums Chart, behind One Direction's third album Midnight Memories, selling 116,000 copies. It became the fastest selling album of 2013 to miss out on the top spot, while also selling more copies in its first week than Barlow's Take That bandmate Robbie Williams' album Swings Both Ways, which sold 109,000 copies the previous week to claim the top spot. The following week, the album sold a further 77,358 copies in the UK. In its third week of release, it once again broke the 100,000 sales mark, with 105,344 sales. In its fourth week of sales, the album sold a further 116,730 copies, up 10.81% from the previous week, and passed sales of 500,000 in the UK with a further 79,000 sold the week after. The album was certified 2× Platinum in the UK at the beginning of 2014 with sales of 652,342 in the UK alone. The album also became Barlow's second top 10 album in Germany, achieving similar chart success to his debut record, Open Road.

Critical reception

At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, Since I Saw You Last received an average score of 54, based on six reviews, which indicates "Mixed or average reviews".

Stephen Thomas Erlewine at AllMusic awarded the record four stars, calling it a "handsome album" that "captures what was good about post-McCartney pop singer/songwriters in the mid-'70s, when the best songsmiths never let their ambitions get in the way of a good tune". Conversely, Observer writer Hermione Hoby gave a one-star review in which she said that the album serves to provide "sonic reference points" for "how unassailably uncool" Barlow is.

Track listing