My stance remains unchanged, baby

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

24/06/22 : Honestly, Nevermind - Drake


Our third visit with Mr Drake (silly me - he's Mr Graham, Drake being his middle name) and neither previous visit has done anything to challenge my view that he's mystifyingly popular - and I'd be amazed if this was the album to convince me otherwise.

And well, there are some signs of life here - but as a whole, my views are at least confirmed, if not reinforced.  I actually quite liked "Sticky", "Massive" and "Tie That Binds" - but only the backing track portion thereof (they reminded me of Orbital).  The vocals and lyrics here (and everywhere else) are bland (it's all about either being with or not being his latest woman) and vocoded beyond belief - it's all extremely tedious. I can't help but feel that if we could just get rid of Drake, then there might be a decent album here - but I'm not sure that's all that likely to happen.  I'm not convinced by the album cover either.

We're at #2 in the charts with a new entry this week - you'll never guess who's #1.  The only other new entry in the top ten is Foals - apparently it was close between the three of them as to who'd get the top spot (and I would much rather have listened to Foals).  Unusually, we have a re-entry in the top ten at #5 with The Smile's A Light For Attracting Attention spending a second week in the chart having previously charted at #19 back in May.  Some kind of physical release nonsense will be going on, but I can't be bothered investigating.

Wikipedia has a reasonable amount on the album, basically all of which says "oooh, this is a bit different".  But is it though?  The critics mostly liked it and it's done well commercially - the US chart placing isn't there yet, I'll be amazed if it's not straight in at #1.

"Customers also listened to" Kendrick. Future and Jack Harlow - all of whom I've come close to listening to recently, but they've all been just pipped by somebody else.  And, to be honest, I think I'd rather listen to any of them rather than more mystifyingly popular fare from the boy Drake.

17/06/22 - Fine when it's not trying too hard
01/07/22 - One I'd like to like

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