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Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

19/11/21 : Between Us - Little Mix

As a father of two girls, I've heard more Little Mix than plenty of men my age and I've got a bit of a soft spot for them - their stuff is pretty well done for that kind of thing and I actively like their best stuff ("Salute" probably wins for me and it's on my general playlist so pops up every so often).  So I had expectations of a reasonable time here.

Oh - it's a "best of".  I didn't know anyone did that any more!  I guess splitting up (I'm so not buying that "hiatus" line) is as good a time as any, although only putting three of them on the album cover seems a little harsh.  It was all perfectly serviceable pop which sometimes I'm just in the mood for - I wouldn't normally pick it on a Monday morning, but it seemed to hit the spot well enough.  And it gave me a chance to decide if "Salute" really did win - and yeah, I think it did but "Black Magic", "Wings", "Power", "Secret Love Song" and "Kiss My" are all fine tracks as well.  I'm not sure I personally needed 90 minutes of Little Mix, but it's squarely aimed at the fans and they'll be like "why not, eh?".

I must admit to some album selection shenanigans going on this week - technically this (at #4) wasn't the highest placed album I've not reviewed before because Red (Taylor's Version) came straight in at #1.  However, I did listen to most of it and decided that my review of the previous version still covered the basics - the main difference I noticed was that the length increased from 68 minutes (which I thought was too much) to 140 minutes (which is definitely waaaay too much).  Anyways, back to Little Mix and this album has hung around the top 10 since its release which somewhat surprised me (Taylor has been hanging around as well, but "only" in the top 30).  I suspect there's some sneaky business going on around Little Mix playlists on the streaming services, so maybe there is a place for "best of" albums these days after all (if not necessarily for the best reasons).  Ed and Abba were the other two albums in the top three and I am especially thankful for Little Mix because without them I'd have had to listen to Rod Stewart's latest offering (who, I was surprised to find out, is "only" 77).

Wikipedia has more on the album than you'd expect for a compilation but there's very little of interest there (and an awful lot of it is track listings for all the different versions).  If you need Little Mix information then the group's Wikipedia page is going to keep you busy for a bit - it's huge.  Basically, they lasted ten years and sold a lot of albums - and it looked like a lot of hard work to me!  One snippet that did jump out from the album's entry is that "Woman Like Me" was written by Nicki Minaj, Jess Glynne, Ed Sheeran and Steve Mac - that's a pretty powerful combination of writers.

"Customers also listened to" Anne-Marie, Charli XCX, Becky Hill, Ella Henderson and Mimi Webb - poptastic ladies the lot of them!  Little Mix are up there with the most poptastic of them all though and this album is a fine summary of their years spent churning out the hits - it's not going to convince any non-believers of their merit but if you are, at best, ambivalent then there's not really anything here to hate and the best bits are really particularly good.

12/11/21 - Not sure I see the point to this
26/11/21 - One for the super-fans only