Life in Mono is the third studio album by English pop singer Emma Bunton. The album was originally set for a November 2006 release in the UK, however it was later pushed back to 4 December 2006. Much like her previous album, Free Me, the album experiments with elements of 1960s pop music. For this particular album the musical arrangement was more directed towards 1960s French pop music, with some elements of British 1960s pop and Motown. Background The album was inspired by 1960s sounds, like motown, bossa nova and pop. Bunton had been working on her third release since winter 2004. The album's title track is a cover version of the hit "Life in Mono" by 1990s trip hop band Mono, best known through its usage in the 1998 film Great Expectations. The track "Take Me to Another Town" contains a sample from Herb Alpert's 1965 "Green Peppers". Songs recorded during this period that did not appear on the final album include "Crazy", "Rhapsody", "Secrets", "Crazy Beautiful", "Ladylike" and "In Another Life". Due to Bunton's pregnancy all forms of promotion were cancelled after a few months. Rumors of a third single surfaced through websites after Bunton stated she was thinking of releasing a third single, however this never came. The album tracks "I Wasn't Looking (When I Found Love)", "Perfect Strangers" and "Take Me to Another Town" were rumoured as choices for the third single. Singles The first single taken from the album was a cover of Petula Clark's 1964 hit single "Downtown". It was released on 13 November 2006. It was the 2006 BBC Children in Need official charity single and reached No. 3 on the UK Singles Chart. The second single, "All I Need to Know" was released on 12 February 2007. It charted at No. 60 on the UK Singles Chart. Critical reception The Guardians Alex Macpherson found that Life in Mono "continues in the same vein" as previous album Free Me, "with breezy Motown rhythms and tastefully swooping strings offsetting Bunton's candyfloss-light vocals exquisitely. Though she has largely eschewed the playful pastiche that made Free Me such a triumph in favour of a more languid subtlety, it's still a sound no one else in British pop is pursuing. And it's difficult to think of anyone who could pull it off more delightfully than Bunton does [...] There's an undercurrent of vague wistfulness that never quite