I saw you dancing in a crowded room

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

12/02/21 : The Highlights - The Weeknd


A greatest hits package - I'm expecting to recognise the big hits and find the rest of it bearable, but probably not interesting enough that I'll feel the need for 18 tracks over 76 minutes.

And yeah, that's pretty much where we are although I was surprised at how quickly I grew bored of the whole thing.  The album is very front loaded with his recognisable (by me, at least) hits - after that it all gets very samey (and ruder!).  If you like The Weeknd, then I'm sure you'll like this but I don't think it feels very likely to create too many new fans.

We're at #2 in the charts this week and the boy has been in the charts ever since - 58 weeks so far.  Which I suspect even Mr Weeknd would struggle to claim is particularly justified - I think there's some jiggery-pokery around "best of" albums and streaming playlists which means this happens, so I suspect such albums are going to come back in style big time when everyone realises this.  Other new entries in the top ten are Foo Fighters (#1 - and I was very meh about it) and Black Country, New Road (#4 - another previous visit).  We also had two random re-entries this week - Jessie Ware (which is good) and Fleet Foxes (which is not).

Wikipedia tells me this is actually his second greatest hits album which felt somewhat premature to me, but I have to take it all back because a) he's actually been around since 2009 and b) his first greatest hits album was only released in Japan (which seems like a very odd thing to do).  After that, it realises there not a lot you can really say about greatest hits albums so talks about his nice red suit for a bit.  I was somewhat surprised to see it only got to #2 over here and in the US - #1 in Canada though (of course!).

"Customers also listened to" Ariana Grande, Doja Cat, Harry Styles and Gesaffelstein.  Errr, who?  This feels like one for The Weeknd fans only - I appreciate this includes quite a few people though.

05/02/21 - One you'll like if you like this sort of thing
19/02/21 - One I liked exactly as much as expected

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