Only way you ahead of me is alphabetically

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

31/01/20 : Music To Be Murdered By - Eminem


Our fourth visit with the angry old fella (these days) - but they were his first three albums (which I like) and I'd have to say, from what I've heard I haven't been so impressed by his later stuff.  The lyrical skills are still there (if anything he raps faster these days, whereas I often struggle to pull a sentence together) but the rage feels less well-directed and more just-there-to-sell-records.  But, nonetheless, I was intrigued to listen to this.

And yeah, I actually quite liked it.  He still raps at a thousand miles an hour but I can amazingly understand most of it and he has quite a lot to say, some of which is quite wise.  And some of which just contains an awful lot of anger directed as his parents and step-dad.  The stand-out track for me is “Darkness” which is very cleverly done, using the same lyrics to reflect his state of mind before a concert and a gunman’s state of mind before a mass shooting - and it has a very powerful ending featuring a montage of news reports on mass shootings.  Which was all horribly poignant given the news from the US yesterday.   He also uses his guest artists well - I even didn’t mind the Ed Sheeran number.  Wonders will never cease!

We're at #2 in the charts this week - down from #1 as a new entry last week at the start of a 30 week run, which was soon followed by a 14 week run.  So I think it's safe to say the album did OK.  At #1 with a new entry this week was J Hus, which I surprisingly liked when I met it previously - and in a busy week for new entries we also have Pet Shop Boys (#3), M Huncho (#5) and, somewhat unexpectedly, The Dave Clark Five (#10).

Wikipedia is going to have loads on this, isn't it?  "Only" 270 milliPeppers - it could have been worse.  I was amazed to see it was his eleventh album though - how did that happen?  I suppose it is 23 years since his debut album - lordy, how time flies!  It also tells me "album's title, cover art, and concept are inspired by Alfred Hitchcock and Jeff Alexander's 1958 spoken word album Alfred Hitchcock Presents Music to Be Murdered By" - the mind boggles!  And you really need to check out that particular album cover - it's wild.  Anyways, back to this album - the critics liked it (much more than his last one, anyway) and the public loved it with it getting to #1 in 16 countries.

"Customers also listened to" Logic, Tech N9ne, Dre and, errr, Coolio.  I wasn't expecting that at all.  But rather than re-evaluating Coolio, I’d be more likely to stick this on again - I was pretty impressed with it.

24/01/20 - An unexpected pleasure
06/02/20 - Indie/folk/disco anyone?

 

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