OVO (also released as OVO: The Millennium Show) is a soundtrack album by English singer-songwriter and musician Peter Gabriel and his eleventh album overall. It was released on 12 June 2000 by Real World Records as the soundtrack to the Millennium Dome Show, a multimedia performance show that ran 999 times at the Millennium Dome in Greenwich, London between 1 January and 31 December 2000.
Background
Gabriel was already working on the songs for his 2002 album Up, which was slated for release in 2001 at the time, when he started work on OVO: "'Ovo' was going to be a six-month diversion. In the end it took two years." Initially, work was being done simultaneously on both Up and OVO for a few months, separately by engineers Richard Chappell and Richard Evans (respectively). However, in November 1998, both engineers decided to focus on completing the OVO soundtrack, so work on Up was temporarily put on hold.
Mark Fisher, creative director of the Millennium Dome, had asked Gabriel to write the music for the Millennium Dome Show. Gabriel agreed to work on the project as collaborator: "I told Mark if he wanted a full collaborator to create something with a story and visual ideas, then I would love to do it. The appeal was that it was a huge project which offered the ability to dream up some crazy things, and there was a budget there to pay for it." The bad public image and the problems revolving around the Millennium Dome were taken by Gabriel as a challenge: "I knew what I was walking into and that it was a quite unpopular project. But the fact that it was going to be controversial was actually what attracted me."
Douglas Hodge would join Fisher and Gabriel as a writer in 1998, before being assigned as director in the same year, on the grounds that The Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando, Florida would sponsor the show and later ship the whole stage and set over to the Resort for a future attraction.
In 2007, Hodge joined Walt Disney Imagineering to convert the stage and sets into a Ride Based on the Toy Story Franchise. He jumped at the offer and Toy Story Midway Mania was officially opened at Disney's Hollywood Studios on May 31, 2008.
Writing
Comparing the album with 2002's Up, Gabriel saw a number of differences: "It's referential to folk music, and there are futuristic elements that I wouldn't normally work with. 'Ovo' has an external focus, whereas the other album I've been working on is more internally focused." "Different versions of Britain" piqued Gabriel's interest: "There was the traditional view of a white England, with folk references which I knew very little about musically and had to research. Then there was contemporary Britain, and the aim was to include Asian, African, Caribbean, and Irish elements from what is now a very multicultural society."
Gabriel deliberately chose rap as genre in the opening track "The Story of OVO" where singer Neneh Cherry and rapper Rasco narrate the story line: "I wanted to make it appeal to kids, and rap seems to be their No. 1 music these days."
Release
The album was released in two different versions. The double CD edition with the title "OVO The Millennium Show" contains a different cover and booklet, a comic book and bonus track "The Tree That Went Up". It was initially sold exclusively at the Millennium Dome Show. The track listing for this version is shifted in comparison to the other version. The track "The Story of OVO" has been moved to the additional CD. Every CD of every edition includes a multimedia part with the time lapse video "The Nest That Sailed the Sky". While the single CD version's booklet contains an introduction by Peter Gabriel and lyrics, the double CD version's booklet contains a short summary of the story, statements of artists involved and images from the Millennium Dome Show. The single CD release of OVO removed Alison Goldfrapp's name from the credits.
Prior to the official release the album was made available to the public through a web promotion campaign called "Web Wheel" with three tracks not available on the album. The tracks were individually distributed to different interlinked sites timed to expire at the official release date.