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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 ...

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...

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 ...

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...