I need love, love to ease my mind

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

06/02/83 : Hello, I Must Be Going! - Phil Collins

This is an odd one for me - I owned and really liked No Jacket Required, but I've never listened to this.  Why did I never venture further back?  Why have I never listened to half the albums from this year?  Seriously, I'm not the person to ask (so, err - who should we ask?).  At the time, I didn't like "You Can't Hurry Love" but now I think it's a well done version - different, but not too different.  So, if I'm being honest, I don't really know what I'm expecting from this one.

And, having listened to it, I'm not entirely sure what I think.  It's surprisingly retro and was more ballad-y than I was expecting - and it also features some terrible accents from Phil in places (the second time he's been found guilty on that front this year).  But it's also surprisingly enjoyable and more variable than I was expecting.  It's even got an instrumental on it as well ("West Side Story") - well, it's instrumental apart from a few random "yeahs".  Was there anything on there to drag me back?  Nope, but it was a perfectly pleasant 45 minutes - and a perfectly pleasant 45 minutes I've never owned - 13/48.  And doesn't he look young on the album cover?  (he was 32). 

We're at #4 this week on his 14th week out of a 40 week run - it never hit the top but spent its first two weeks at #2.  After its initial run, it was back in the charts another TWENTY ONE times - totalling 114 weeks in all, some of which were at particularly bizarre times eg why on earth did it spend fifteen weeks in the charts in 1990?!?  Above it in the charts were Men At Work, Echo (the highest new entry) and John Lennon with no other new entries in the top 10 - Stiff Little Fingers at #22 were the next highest and it was also nice to see Eurythmics debuting this week all the way down at #77.  Also visible further down the charts is Phil's debut solo effort Face Value and we if think HIMBG! showed weird chart behaviour, that's been even odder over the years with 275 weeks across 30 visits and its longest run was 68 weeks in '85/'86 (having been released in '81).  All very peculiar.

Wikipedia tells me the album is named after a Marx Brothers song - I think I knew it was an MB reference but don't think I knew they'd done any songs (don't write in - they're not my specialist subject).  It also tells me that "You Can't Hurry Love" was penned by the songwriting trio of Holland-Dozier-Holland - those boys penned a classic song or two over the years.  The critics were pretty mixed in their views of the album, but as we've already heard, it did OK commercially - if not quite as well as Face Value.

"Customers also listened to" Genesis, Philip Bailey, Peter Gabriel and Mike & The Mechanics - I think we could probably have guessed most of them.  I'm not sure much of this album would make my personal "best of Phil" but it was an enjoyable enough listen nonetheless.

30/01/83 - An astonishing album, probably
20/02/83 - One I'd completely avoided