Pass Me By

Pass Me By is the sophomore album of American pop/R&B singer, Taylor (he had decided to go by only his first name at this point in his career). The album was released by Saturdays Records in the UK on 14 June 2010 and was distributed and released by Jive Records in the US, the following day on 15 June 2010. The album has since been re-released two times as Pass Me By2 and Pass Me By3, which include remixes of the original tracks and collaborations by a variety of artists such as Midnight, Crystal Barker, and others. Pass Me By3 will be released in 2011.

Although it was never, at any point after its release, a commercial failure and was massive critical success garnering overwhemingly positive reviews, album sales initially did not reach that of Taylor's preceding album, Trash Me. After the re-release of the album, Pass Me Buy 2, the album started to gain more popularity with the public and sales of the album began to rise.

The album has since over 1 million copies in the UK and has been certified diamond by the BPI. It has also sold over three million copies in the United States and has been certified triple platinum by the RIAA. The album also reached #1 on the albums chart in the US and UK and was the 18th best selling album of 2010 in the UK.

Pass Me By has been nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards.

Album title
The meaning of the album title, Pass Me By, came from Taylor's frustration that he would be overlooked on his own album while people would most likely focus more on the people he would be working and collaborating with.

The title track in the album's third and final installment, Pass Me By3, only summed up what he was feeling with it saying "I don't know what's going on/but I don't mind/and the feeling is strong/don't pass me by".

Other music insiders have simplified the album by saying that Taylor wants people to stop "passing him by" and ignoring him. It was also assumed by many critics that he would most likely liked to be focused on as promotion for Pass Me By draws to an end.

Pass Me By
Taylor originally began working on a rockier style album in early 2010. These plans were scrapped fairly soon into the project as Taylor cited that style was "just not him".

He than reverted back to the original idea, that was to have another pop influenced album. Despite having various genres on his first album, Taylor took it upon himself to make this album pure pop. Again, the singer felt uninspired and relied on several of the albums' collaborating artists to write most of the songs for the album.

When the album didn't meet expectations from both critics and fans alike, Jive Records were brought in to help the album and eventually ended up being his co-label. Executives at Jive felt the songs Taylor had written for the album were good, but lacked the flair they needed to make them great. It was with this in mind that Taylor and both Jive & Saturdays Records decided to remix the whole album in a different style.

The final product ended up with just 4 of the albums' original tracks remaining, and instead had 4 brand new urban and dance styled tracks and two remixes of tracks from Trash Me.

Pass Me By2
Taylor began work on Pass Me By2 once he felt that his album wasn't selling enough and once he felt that the public was losing an interest in him (even though the album was still selling noticeably). Taylor wanted Pass Me By2 to have the public become interested again with the album.

For the second installment of what is now known as the Pass Me By series, Taylor decided to re-record some of the tracks from the original album and add a R&B sound to them; other new tracks were also recorded for Pass Me By 2 with them also having a R&B sound to them as well. The re-release was Taylor's first foray into making R&B music.

Pass Me By 2 also featured a lot of collaborations. Taylor collaborated with the likes of Paige White, Genevere Johnson, L.E.X, and others on the project.

Pass Me By2 would be nicknamed by Taylor, his label, and the public as "Pass Me By Squared".

Pass Me By3
By the time, Taylor began working on Pass Me By3, Pass Me By (as a whole with the original and re-released "cubed" version) began to sell according to his and his label's expectations. Many people were rather surprised that Taylor decided to re-release the album a second time. Pass Me By3 was confirmed to be the final installment of the Pass Me By series.

Taylor decided to record new tracks for the album and it also featured collaborations. Taylor this time around collaborated with the likes of Emily Henning, MIDNIGHT, Romo, Paulo Araujo & Helena Rossi

Just as Pass Me By2 was nicknamed "Pass Me By Squared", Pass Me By3 was nicknamed "Pass Me By Cubed".

Pass Me By: The Collection
In late 2010, as revealed by Taylor's official site, it was announced that Taylor would be releasing box set called Pass Me By: The Collection which features all the songs released on the Pass Me By series.

According to the website, the box set includes 4 CDs (the regular version of Pass Me By, Pass Me By2, Pass Me By3, and a bonus disc), A DVD featuring music videos (including some new music videos as well), an art book with hand-written comments from Taylor, a T-shirt, and a keyring which would be customized if the customer bought the boxset from the website.

The boxset, according to Taylor's website and HMV, would cost £54.99.

Promotion
The album was heavily promoted and Taylor made various appearances on TV shows in the UK and also did a lot of live performances during that time as well to promote the album.

Promotion for Pass Me By3 was the most noticeable out of the whole series. On his official website, fans got a chance to "unlock" the songs where, once they was unlocked, a snippet of the songs from Pass Me By3 would play. Usually the snippets consisted of the first minute of the songs.

Kingdom (September 2010)
A 6 date tour entitled "Kingdom" was announced to coincide with Pass Me By.

Taylor visited arena's in Manchester, London & Cardiff as part of the tour. All dates sold out within an hour of being available.

The tour also made headlines when tour promoters LiveNation underestimated demand for tour merchandise and sold out of everything after the first two dates.

Re-orders of the stock were quickly taken and managed to be distributed in time for the next date.

The Revolution Tour (December 2010 - )
The Revolution Tour was announced in October for 10 arenas across the UK, totaling 12 dates altogether with two at Manchester & two at London.

Like previously, this tour sold out in less than an hour with many fans buying tickets again for the Christmas dates.

The tour runs throughout the whole of December, coming to an end in Manchester on 23rd December, the day before Christmas eve.

Taylor's official website announced that he would be touring US, Canada & Australia later in 2011.