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Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 19/06/26 : you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love - Olivia Rodrigo  This is our third visit with Olivia and I've liked her previous two, so I imagine I'll like this as well. Yeah, nothing wrong with this, although it's a bit of style departure from the previous two, feeling more grown up (she's getting old, I guess). It's maybe lacking the instant bangers of the previous two on first listen, but I suspect it wouldn't take more than another visit or two for me to change my opinion there. It's quite a good album title because a lot of the tracks are about being in love and also not being entirely happy about it or the aftermath, but she avoids the Taylor Swift-esque general moaniness - there's a general "it's complicated" vibe to it (which for me is a much better starting point than "it's all his fault"). I think there's a decent amount of variety on there with s...

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 31/03/63 : Bobby Vee Meets The Crickets - Bobby Vee & The Crickets Bobby was so Buddy-like that I cannot consider myself surprised that he got together with The Crickets - giving us our third visit with Bobby in the year. I'm guessing it will be perfectly enjoyable - but possibly a bit more Bobby than anyone needs in swift succession. Somewhat to my surprise, I actually don't think it is too much Bobby - and he's also not trying too hard to be Buddy either. There are a few Buddy tracks on there, with the opener "Peggy Sue" being a somewhat concerning statement of intent, but they don't go overboard with it. Most of the album is covers of 50's rock and roll numbers and they do a good job - I particularly liked their versions of Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen" and Little Richard's "Lucille". There's certainly an argument that it's a bit dated for '63 but I...

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 07/04/63 : Jazz Samba - Stan Getz & Charlie Byrd Rolling Stone gave us a few jazz albums, but we've met remarkably few of them in the charts so it will be interesting to see what this is like. But I'm not expecting to actually like it though... I guess it's jazzy samba - or maybe samba-y jazz. It's not as challenging as I feared, so I can't say I hated it - but it all felt very musical wallpaper-ish and drifted by without really making the slightest impression on me. I guess "why?" would be my lasting impression of the whole thing - which can't really be considered a recommendation. We're at #16 in the charts this week on their last week of a three week run - it managed four runs across the year given them seven weeks on the chart in total, with it having peaked at #15 in its very first week. The top five this week were  Cliff Richard , Buddy Holly, The Beatles ,   All Star Festival (which...

Continuing my trip up Empire's  top 20 TV shows of 2025 #18 :     The Bear After the extended table-setting of Season 3, people started to wonder if The Bear had gone off the boil (insert other tortured food metaphors here). Thankfully in Season 4, the unwavering quality of writing, performance and filmmaker was bolstered by slightly more propulsive storytelling, and some more upbeat moments this time around; Carmy, at long last, is no longer trapped in the fridge (literally or metaphorically). There are some masterful episodes here – the Ayo Edebiri-penned ‘Worms’, in which her Sydney leaves the kitchen to look after a friend’s daughter, is a beautiful little slice of life; and ‘Bears’, the near-feature-length wedding episode, threatens to be another piece of near-unbearably tense familial arguing, until it blossoms into a great big warm hug. Hopefully this return to form continues into Season 5, with Carmy seemingly <spoiler alert>. After The Bear took the top spo...

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 14/04/63 : A Bobby Vee Recording Session - Bobby Vee Our second visit with young Bobby this year (and he's not finished with us yet) - last time I liked it, but that was a best-of so, it will be interesting to see what we have here. Yeah, it's pretty similar to last time except that I don't know any of the tracks. It's all very Buddy Holly-ish, so was already sounding a bit dated compared to some of the stuff we've heard from the year but it's done well enough. And at twelve songs in 25 minutes, he's really not hanging about - he looks super young on the album cover though! We're at #15 in the charts this week with a re-entry on a single week's visit, but he managed a nine week run earlier in the year, peaking at #10. The top five this week were  Cliff Richard ,  Buddy Holly,  The Beatles ,  West Side Story  and  Elvis Presley  with the highest new entry being one Bobby Vee (#20). Wikipedia tel...

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 21/04/63 : That Was The Week That Was - Various Artists Some comedy for a change - it will be interesting to see how dated this has become. Well, a lot of it is political and quite a bit of it is class based, so those aspects have certainly dated - but my overall feeling was one of confusion because there was so much of it I just didn't understand how it was supposed to be funny. The general vibe is one of clever wittyness, but there was almost a complete absence of laughs on my part - it wasn't so much that the jokes weren't landing, but that I just didn't recognise where the jokes were supposed to be. So, all in all, this was a most peculiar experience - it was nice to recognise Roy Kinnear and Willie Rushton's voices though.  We're at #17 in the chart this week on the last week of a nine week run, with it having peaked at #11 in its third week. The top five this week were  Cliff Richard ,  The Beatles , B...