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I gave you my everything, but it was never enough for you

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Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts. 24/11/17 : The Architect -  Paloma Faith On our last visit, Noel asked who built the moon and so here's Paloma giving a perfectly acceptable, if probably inaccurate, answer. This is our second visit with the lass - last time I was surprised at how bearable it all was, so here's hoping for more of the same. Yeah, this is all very bearable as well - it's got a reasonable amount of variety across the album and she throws herself into it all. It's not quite my sort of thing but if you're looking for something like Adele, Ellie Goulding or Ella Henderson, then I reckon you could do far worse than this. I wasn't expecting Samuel L Jackson to kick things off though! We're at a somewhat surprising #1 with a new entry on the start of an impressive 38 week run - and she followed that up with a further 11 week run a couple of months later, which you rarely see. The rest of the top five were  Sam Smith , Alfie Boe ...
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She was there, diamonds in her hair - singing out a dead man’s song

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Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts. 01/12/17 : Who Built The Moon? -  Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds So this is our third visit with NGHFB and I might have mentioned that I really don't see why Noel feels the need to include his name in the band (even though I'm pretty sure it's not Noel who's responsible for such nonsense) and I'm also not convinced that later period Noel uses all the song writing skills he has previously deployed. But let's see where we are here, shall we? Hmmm. I actually liked this more than I was expecting - there are some decent tunes on it, although I'd struggle to say the same for the lyrics. But, the decent tunes are all very derivative - even I noticed that one of them sounds almost exactly like The Beatles' "Come Together" and I'm sure there must have been others similarly duplicated. So, I'm kinda pleased that Noel is introducing classic sounds to the youths - provided they go on t...
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Take no prisoners for me, I'm told you're elevating

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Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 13/03/26 : Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally - Harry Styles  Our third solo visit with Harry and I suspect I've been forced to listen to all the tracks already, but let's give the album a proper listen in the order that Harry intended to see if my opinion can rise about the heady heights of "perfectly fine".  Nope, it's very much sticking at "perfectly fine". There's nothing particularly wrong with any of the tracks (although some of them do use some strange sounds) but a lot of that is because there doesn't appear to be very much to them. I heard an interesting argument on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast that this is because Harry can't put any content in his songs because the fans over-analyse everything and come up with outlandish theories - which may well be true, but I don't see why I have to suffer as a result. Although, to be fair, suffer is an overly harsh word to ...
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Nothing to stop this being the best day ever

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Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts. 08/12/17 : Songs Of Experience -  U2 Our ninth visit with them chirpy Oirish funsters (and we've got at least another three to meet) and this is one I've never listened to - in fact, I'm not sure I even knew it existed. Hmmm. Well, I didn't hate it but I didn't love it either. It felt like they were aiming for that big stadium sound and I suspect they'd sound good swirling around a cavernous arena with much accompanying cheering. But, it's all very soulless and, on initial listen at least, incredibly forgettable - the only songs I particularly noticed were "Red Flag Day" which harked back to their earlier sound and "13 (There Is A Light)" which would fit nicely on to Achtung Baby . My only other comment is that, in some places, the lyrics are BAD - cringingly so. I do like the album cover though - it's Bono's son (you'd never guess, would you?) and The Edge's daughter ...
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We are searchlights, we can see in the dark

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Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts. 15/12/17 : Beautiful Trauma -  P!nk Our fifth visit with Alecia Beth Moore-Hart and generally I've quite enjoyed her stuff. Some of it is a bit over-enthusiastic for my old ears but that's fine - not everything has to be for me, you know! Ah, this has got "What About Us?" on it, which is probably one of my favourite tracks of hers. And the rest of the album is in a similar vein, slightly less excitable than her earlier stuff - so I liked it. The other thing that's obviously different from her earlier stuff is that the girl has been taking singing lessons - she wasn't exactly a slouch before, but there's a control and depth there now that wasn't there before. I doubt I'll ever listen to it again, but I feel this probably hit the spot for those who were looking for this sort of thing. We're at #9 in the charts this week on her ninth week of a 39 week run with it having peaked at #1 in its deb...
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And the lights in every broken, blown-out window scream of nothing

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Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts. 22/12/17 : Revival -  Eminem Ah - what say's Xmas #1 Album more than the latest offering from Eminem. This is our sixth visit with Mr Mathers (the 27th artist to reach this milestone) and I believe he was in a bit of a creative slump around this time, so expectations are not high - oh well, it's not like it's 77 minutes long or anything. Oh, hang on... Hmmm. A lot of this is surprising, for a number of different reasons. The first (and possibly most) surprising thing is how much of this is just boring, which I wasn't expecting at all. It's not terrible but it's just not skilful, witty, controversial or repugnant - so what's the point to it exactly? Amusingly, "Offended" is pretty offensive (with some very impressive lyric spitting) and it's actually quite enjoyable to roll your eyes at naughty old Slim. But most of it is just him rapping pretty averagely (for him, at least) over a mediocre ...
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You must think that I'm stupid

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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...
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