Late nights in the middle of June

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

14/08/20 : Dreamland - Glass Animals


I don't mind Glass Animals (who recently got to #1 in the US charts with "Heat Waves" which took a record 59 weeks to climb there - and got over a billion streams on Spotify in the process!) but I do worry that a whole album will prove to be a little samey.

But actually, they pull it off quite well with considerably more variety than I expect - I'm not sure all of it works (particularly the odd rappy bit) but I didn't find myself going "OK, enough with this already" at any point, which was a pleasant surprise.  It does a good job of bringing an 80s sound up to date, so fans of that genre might like to check this out.  "Heat Waves" is indeed a fine track (and interestingly placed at track 14 on the album) - "Your Love (Deja Vu)" also jumped out at me, but it was all pleasingly listenable.  I'm really not convinced by the album cover though.

We're not at #1 this week - a new entry at #2 instead which managed only two weeks before disappearing, which really surprised me but I guess everyone was just too busy listening to "Heat Waves".  Taylor Swift was at #1 with her favourite album of mine so far (and I'm somewhat surprised to see I've listened to four of them now!) which, in comparison, has managed 91 weeks on the chart (and counting).  The only other new entry in the top ten was a somewhat surprising Deep Purple at #4, with their 21st album which hit their highest chart position in 46 years!

Wikipedia tells me Glass Animals have been around since 2010 and this is their third album - which I was completely unaware of but it's fair to say this album has done considerably better commercially than their previous ones (Wikipedia says it's a radically different sound as well).  It also contains the following amusing sentence "A visual album, entitled Dreamland: The Home Movies, was released on VHS shortly after the album's release" - the whole VHS thing must have blown some kids minds.  You do WHAT with it?!?  The album was well received both critically and commercially (#7 in the US) and it's nice to see a band who've done the hard yards getting some success, even if the album only disturbed the charts for a couple of weeks.

"Customers also listened to" Lil Nas X, Ed Sheeran, The Weeknd and Maroon 5 - which seems like a somewhat odd mix of artists.  But actually, having listened to this, I'm not entirely sure who I'd compare them with who's around now - La Roux or Hurts sprung to mind for me with their 80s inspired but still updated kinda sound.  Which I enjoyed a lot more than I was expecting to - cheers guys!

07/08/20 - Just not for me
21/08/20 - Unsurprisingly bearable

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