Try as I may, I could never explain
Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts
31/07/20 : Twenty Twenty - Ronan Keating
Well, I'm not entirely sure this was what I had in mind when I started this exercise - but here we are anyway. I must own up to not minding some of Ronan's stuff from the dim and distant past - "When You Say Nothing At All" is a good song, but we do have to bear in mind that a) it was 23 (TWENTY THREE!!!) years ago now and b) you do revisit his love songs when you learn he was shagging one of his backing dancers behind his wife's back at the time. But, as I say, it was 23 years ago now, so I can forgive him that but whether I can forgive him his latest album remains to be seen.
Well, they're nice enough songs but they're all a bit bland - except for "When You Say Nothing At All" which is pretty much exactly the same as the original, so you have to wonder why he bothered. Having said that "Life Is A Rollercoaster" (which wasn't a great song originally) has been absolutely murdered (including some terrible Oirish-ness from a Boyzone random), so I guess things could be worse. I would also say his voice sounds suspiciously auto-tuned at times though. He does like a duet with a lovely lady, but it was quite nice to hear from Emeli Sande and Shania Twain and I also liked Clare Bowen's contribution - who I didn't know, but she's in Nashville so my wife will love her.
We're at #2 in the charts this week and he managed five weeks before disappearing, which seems like a decent effort - far more than it deserved, certainly. Taylor was a new entry at #1 this week and the only other new entry in the top ten was Neck Deep with "All Distortions Are Intentional" - which I know absolutely nothing about, but I must admit I'm intrigued about. Another interesting new entry this week is Kid Laroi at #12 which has since managed 84 weeks on the chart - never getting any higher than #6, but hanging around for a LONG time (I can also report that one week I thought I had to listen to it and I HATED it, so was really annoyed when I found I didn't actually have to).
Wikipedia doesn't have an awful lot on the album, but I spent a lot of time working out how many songwriters were involved - 26 across 13 songs, which seems like more than are strictly necessary. Wikipedia doesn't tell me what the critics thought (I'm guessing that's probably best), but it did OK commercially, but surprisingly not that great in Ireland - they LURVE him over there (but not as much as Westlife, obviously!)
"Customers also listened to" Faith Hill, Peter Andre and NIck Knowles. Yes, that Nick Knowles. Bizarre. This isn't a hateful album but it's hard to imagine anyone listening to this unless they were a Ronan fan - and I suspect even they would struggle to think of a reason to revisit it. It's just all a bit odd really.
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