The Golden Mile was the long awaited second album from My Life Story. Originally due for release on 3rd March 1997, once again the release date was moved back by a week to the 10th March 1997. The CD version of the album also contains an Interactive CD Rom component, enabling anyone with a PC or Mac to enter the virtual world of My Life Story. Her you have to gamble in the My Life Story Casino in order to win Golden Shillings which you can use to gain admission to the other attractions. These include a rifle range, where you can shoot the orchestra and the Suited & Booted emporium where you can dress Jake in a variety of outfits. There are also the lyrics for each song on the Golden Mile and fact files on each member of the orchestra provided, if only you can win enough shillings to see them all.
The Golden Mile entered the U.K album chart at number 34.
Rather unusually for My Life Story the vinyl version of The Golden Mile did not carry an inscription on either of the run-outs
The Golden Mile received mixed reviews in the music press

The Golden Mile: Q Magazine
My Life Story's Jake Shillingford is plainly partial to a bit of glamour as befits a native Southender with a penchant for silver suits. His grand design for pop firmly dispenses with the need for grubby guitars, preferring instead a grander canvas that positively demands the use of labour-intensive strings and brass to underpin his very English affection for the absurd, the mundane and the vernacular. Yet, with the exception of the two singles, Sparkle and 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, the execution never quite lives up to the billing, not least because, lyrically, he's nowhere near as acidic as obvious peer such as Baby Bird's Stephen Jones or the Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon. With no real bite to the songs, all the orchestral pomp in the world can't make The Golden Mile much more than a fitfully entertaining parade of largely empty gestures.
**

The Golden Mile: Select
How difficult is it to make a dreadful album? Not just a bad one, poorly played or badly sung, but an album so relentlessly abysmal, so irredeemably worthless, that it causes you to sit alone by a pond for a while, reassessing your whole value system.
Ideally there should be a large gap between the artist's perception, what they think they're up to, and the final numbing result. In Jake Shillingford's case it's a yawning eternity, the space between two stars. He's been trawling this ersatz charabanc aroud for years now and clearly thinks he's some kind of artist. In fact, all he does is steal from some - Scott Walker, Lionel Bart, The Divine Comedy. And like some dribbling remedial cutpurse he doesn't even know what to do once he's nicked this stuff. So he breaks it. With his grating howl and the feigned expertise of brass 'n' string arrangements, "Golden Mile" would be atrocity enough, but coupled with such alarming lyrical stupidity as "Claret" - "Vineyards crying for your wasted years/Hear the vineyrads cry" - the whole experience comes close to sounding like some artless tone-deaf Cockney operatta performed by the inmates of Bedlam Asylum. Under the direction of Lionel Blair.

My Life Story Fact: This is the worst album ever made. But much, much worse. 0/5. Soundbit: "Golden Showers".

The Golden Mile: Smash Hits
Opening with 12 Reasons Why (the best pop single of last year not to feature the Spice Girls), My Life Story's second album declares its musical intentions right from the start. Vocalist Jake Shillingford does not do things by halves, not only can he boast more shiny suits than Burton's, he is the captain of the only pop outfit who could field a football team. And they are all here, so if you like your pop to feature lush strings and bouncy brass then look no further. More importantly, Jake is a great pop star and though he is still to capture the live sizzle completely, this album may get him the audience he deserves.
4/5

The Golden Mile: Vox
Jake Shillingford has waited ages to take his pop orchestra into the mainstream. But string-soaked flamboyance is his calling, not a passing novelty and, after all the record-company hold-ups, all the ground lost to lesser talents, his time seems to have come.
With richer production and a much stroinger set of songs than the band's patchy 1995 debut "Mornington Crescent", "The Golden Mile" is packed with hooks and epic choruses, and comes closer to recreating the technicolour spectacle of their live shows.
The lyrics may be slice-of-life seducytions and melodramas, but the real love-match here is between Shillingford and showbiz itself.
There's a lot of Marc Almond touches, a yearning for the Kinks/Small Faces' dandy mod-world and enough mood changes to keep the dramatic orchestral swoops from getting formulaic. "The Golden Mile" does fade a little after a stomping first half, but still comes close to realising Shillingford's sparkly fop-pop masterplan.
8/10

"The Golden Mile" - My Life Story Even more than the fantastic glitter romps for which Jake is famed, it is the ballads ("Claret", "You Can't Uneat The Apple") that make "Golden Mile" such satisfying escapism. Taking life's mundanities and making them magical.
Melody Maker, 20/12/97, 'Albums of the Year 1997

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