I'm going backwards through time at the speed of light

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

13/08/21 : Crying On The Bathroom Floor - Will Young


Well, I wasn't expecting to come across Will on my travels, I can tell you (or not this soon anyway!).  People can get quite sniffy about the man, but I've generally got a lot of time for him - whilst not necessarily being a huge fan of his music (the lovely Mrs Reed is quite a fan though!).  But he does have a nice voice, so I was perfectly happy to give this a go...

...but it turns out it's not his music anyway.  It's an album of cover versions of female artists he likes (and that's a good a reason for picking them as any, I guess).  And yeah, there's nothing wrong with this - I'd struggle to say any of the versions are exactly essential but they're all perfectly listenable (and he still has a nice voice).  I'd go as far as saying I liked "Daniel" (Bat For Lashes), "Crying On The Bathroom Floor" (MUNA), "Indestructible" (Robyn) and "Missing" (EBTG).  So if Will Young fans listen to this and then check out some of the artists covered, it can't hurt now, can it?  Particularly Robyn - I think she's seriously under-rated, so check out the Body Talk albums.  Personally, I wasn't overly familiar with MUNA, so I went and checked out some of her stuff and quite liked it.

We're at #3 in the charts this week - Dave and Billie are at #1 and #2 respectively, neither of whom we've mentioned before as part of this exercise (I think!) but they were both featured in The Guardian's best 50 albums of 2021 (and they're both OK albums, if not their finest work imho).  Of much more peculiar interest is the other new entries in the top 10 - Barbra Streisand (#5), George Harrison (#6 with a re-release of this) and Brian May (#7).  Who, if George was still with us, would have a combined age of 231.  And then there was Fredo (#9) who at 27, is younger than all their kids.  Will only lasted 3 weeks on the charts before disappearing from view entirely though.

Wikipedia doesn't have an awful lot on the album other than telling me that "This is not a covers album as such" (spoiler alert - it is) but he does somewhat save himself by saying "I wanted to bring songs from female artists who I admire into a new arena" so I'll let him off.  Amusingly, Will's Wikipedia entry includes the following "Will Young has written every popular song released in the UK since 2002" - I always get a chuckle when such things manage to sneak past the public jury.

"Customers also listened to" Stacy Solomon, Matt Cardle, Marti Pellow and Martine McCutcheon - a slightly odd mix to say the least.  And I'd say Will is easily my favourite of that bunch (but I do have a bit of a soft spot for Stacy!) - this isn't going to get him any new fans, but it might get some other artists some new fans, so I can go along with that (and will be suggesting to Mrs Reed that she gives it a listen)

06/08/21 - I liked this more than I was expecting to
20/08/21 - A completely fine, but utterly pointless album

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