scaryblog

Starting my trip back through the 2017 album charts. 29/12/17 : The Thrill Of It All -  Sam Smith This is our fourth visit with Sam and although I know they've done some decent stuff in their time, the only things I can remember are "La La La" with Naughty Boy and "Unholy" because of their silly costume. I'm expecting this to be OK though... Ah, I did remember the opening track "Too Good At Goodbyes", which is decent enough, if a little overwrought (I reckon Adele could do a cracking version of this - she does understated overwrought well). To be honest, "a little overwrought" applies to most of the rest of the album (I suspect a break-up might have been involved) but somehow they get away with it - the boundary to "wildly over the top" is never breached (imho - other opinions are undoubtedly available). I didn't love any of it, but I can see if you just fancy a good old mope then this would hit the spot nicely - and there...

I was buying a lot of music in '01 but I wasn't sure how much of it was from the charts... Well it all started very badly, but it certainly picked up and had some pretty decent albums hiding away in there - and there was a reasonable mix of genres across the year, although the vast majority of it was pretty mainstream. We had a decent ownership ratio of 21%, compared with 40% in '99 (our highest yet) and a mere 9% in '03 (our lowest of the record buying years so far). It would have been pushed higher if we hadn't previously met  R.E.M. ,  Daft Punk ,  Muse ,  Coldplay   and Eminem , but there was never any danger of it troubling the '99 total. Looking at the best selling albums of the year, the top spot was taken by  Dido  which is very unsurprising news because that girl was EVERYWHERE back then and she had the whole year in the chart. Second place goes to another big non-surprise from  Robbie Williams , but he only had five weeks of the year (a...

Completing my trip back through the 2001 album charts. 07/01/01 : 7 -  S Club 7 And we complete our trip through the year with our third second visit - interestingly all of them have involved one album in January and one in December. My verdict the last time I met this lot was that it was fine enough cheese in small doses, but a whole album was too much. I'll be amazed if things differ here, but at least we've got "Reach" to enjoy. Yeah, it's the opening track so they knew that had something relatively special there - I also didn't mind "Never Had A Dream Come True" and was quite surprised they didn't murder Stevie Wonder's "Lately". Whilst the rest of the album is most definitely cheesy, I enjoyed this more than the previous visit - there feels to be more variety here and the songs seem to suit their voices better. Don't get me wrong, I'm not declaring this a misunderstood work of musical genius, but it's certainly bea...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 06/03/26 : The Mountain - Gorillaz Our fourth visit with Gorillaz (who I still struggle to forgive for what they did when they headlined Glastonbury), which somewhat surprises me - but not as much as the chart position at which we find ourselves. More on this later... Hmmm. Well. Considering each track singly, there's at least something to admire - there are varied interesting "ethnic" elements and rhythms combined with more "modern" styles and instruments, often with a quirky guest artist involved, giving an interesting sound (if not necessarily a particularly loveable one). But, to my uncultured ear at least, whilst there is obvious variety between the tracks, they all follow the same pattern - a dirge-y male voice (usually, but certainly not always Damon) accompanied by something odd like a Tibetan nose-flute, a Honduran ear-trumpet or a Polynesian arse-ocarina. So it all gets very tiresome and that...

Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 films of 2025 #14 :     Bugonia The partnership between filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and star Emma Stone continues to bear bonkers fruit – their remake of Korean satire Save The Green Planet! is as odd a concoction as you’d expect from the team behind The Favourite and Poor Things, laced with dark deadpan humour, bursts of gore, and an aching sadness underneath it all. Stone lopped off all her hair – on camera and all – as kidnapped CEO Michelle Fuller, whose captors (an excellent Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis) are convinced she’s <spoiler>. The whole thing vibrates on an unusual frequency, as the power between Michelle and the conspiracy theorists shifts back and forth – all culminating in one of the most hilariously divisive finales of the year. Pure cinematic nectar. I enjoyed Poor Things but it was completely bonkers - I'd be surprised if we're not in for more of the same, whilst also being completely different. Yup - very...

Continuing my trip back through the 2001 album charts. 14/01/01 : Coast To Coast -  Westlife This is our fifth visit with them Oirish lads - previous visits have ranged from the heights of "surprisingly tolerable" to "I'd rather poke my eyes out than listen to this again". It's our second visit with them this year - I didn't enjoy the last one and I have absolutely no expectations that this is going to be any better. Well, it's still not great but it doesn't feel quite as wet as our previous visit and I think there's more variety here as well. There was also a pleasing lack of fiddle or penny whistle, and whilst they obviously still love a late stage key change, they're less obviously signposted here than I was expecting.  I obviously didn't love any of it, but it could have been a lot worse - I can even tolerate their versions of "Uptown Girl" and "I Have A Dream" but I do have to say it's a particularly bad c...