I don't miss the poison arrows aimed directly at my head

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

27/08/21 : Solar Power - Lorde


I wasn't convinced by Lorde when she first burst on to the scene but she's grown on me since then and I liked her second album when it appeared on Rolling Stone's list.  So I was looking forward to listening to this (whose presence had completely passed me by until now).

And yeah, I liked it - it kinda slides past you, but in a good "I'd better listen to that again" kinda way.  So I did - although I must admit this was at least partially because I was avoiding listening to Iron Maiden or Kanye too early in the morning.  It's got a very Lana Del Rey sound to it, with some dashes of Haim in there as well.  For me the first three tracks "The Path", "Solar Power" and "California" are the strongest which does result in a slight feeling of dissatisfaction after they're gone - but there's enough variety in there (for me, anyway) to keep you in there and it sounds very decent over headphones.  I'm not entirely convinced by the album cover though.

We're at #2 in the chart this week in the first of Lorde's four weeks in the chart - and the album feels like it deserved better than that to me.  At #1 was Olivia's album which has definitely done better - this was the last of its five weeks at the top, but it hasn't been out of the top 20 in the 38 weeks it's spent on the charts so far.  Other new entries in the top 10 are Jake Bugg, Kurupt FM and Orla Gartland - the last of which surprised me because I've never even heard of her (but I liked it when I checked it out).

Wikipedia has a reasonable amount on the album, but little of great interest.  Interestingly, the section on the album artwork talks about Lorde discussing it with Stephen Colbert - but unfortunately they couldn't show it on TV in the US because it's soooo rude.  It was reasonably well received critically and did pretty well commercially getting to #5 in the US and unsurprisingly, #1 in NZ.

"Customers also listened to" Phoebe Bridgers, Jenny Lewis, Lana del Rey and St Vincent - some strong female talent there.  And this continued the run of strong female lead albums - I liked it a lot.

20/08/21 - A completely fine, but utterly pointless album
03/09/21 - Let's hear it for the girls

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