Let's not forget this place

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

01/12/96 : A Different Beat - Boyzone

If I tell you that I have not one but two compilation albums that I chose to ignore and listen to Boyzone instead, that probably gives you an idea of the quality involved...

Firstly, all the way down at #7 we have Around The World - The Journey So Far from East 17.  An album with, of course, 17 tracks.  Of which I recognise a mere three - and one of them is their cover of "West End Girls".  I was somewhat surprised to see they had ten top 10 singles over the years, but I don't feel that quite does enough to make them culturally relevant, so this was rejected I'm afraid.  However, this came soooo close to getting reviewed when compared with...

...The Smurfs Christmas Party!  For one second, I was worried that this was like a Wombles album with original tracks, which I'd feel I had to listen to - and then I saw it included such classics as "Smurfing Around The Christmas Tree" and "All I Want For Xmas Is A Smurf Hat".  So on we go - thankfully.

And whoever thought I'd use that word in relation to Boyzone?  Hmmm.  I remember them being very Take Thatty, but they don't seem to have quite maintained their place in people's hearts in the way that TT have somehow managed.  I'm expecting something lightweight but not horrible.

And yeah, that's pretty much where we are.  It's very Ronan-heavy for the first few tracks which feels a bit unfair - and then we get to "Melting Pot" and "Ben" which share the work around and it really didn't take very long for me to start thinking "let's just stick with Ronan, shall we?".  All in all, it's worse than I was expecting but not really hateful (except for "She Walks Through The Fair" which absolutely ruins a lovely song), although some of the singing was surprisingly dubious in places.  55 minutes was considerably more than I needed - and it probably won't surprise you to hear that neither of us have ever come close to owning it, maintaining our consistent 0% for the year at 0/5.  And don't they look SO young on the cover?

We're at a record equalling low of #9 in the charts this week on their fifth week of a 25 week run (having debuted at #1).  And then it managed three more random weeks in the lower reaches of the charts in '97 and '98 for no obvious reason.  Above it in the chart the top five were Spice Girls, R&J, Celine Dion, The Beautiful South and Simply Red.  And then, at #6, we have the first record I've mentioned this year that I've previously heard - The Score from The Fugees.  Finally!  The highest new entry this week was, for a change, almost in the top ten, at #12 - Enigma, who I seem to recall were very aptly named.  The next highest was, quite obviously, the best of Buddy Holly at #33 - I appreciate he did some very decent tunes but I would have expected that everyone who wanted to own them would have managed to do so in the 37 years since he died.  Bizarrely, at #35 was an album of Hank Marvin playing Buddy Holly songs, so I guess there was something odd Buddy-related going on at this time.

Wikipedia has a couple of paragraphs on the album - all of which are about when it was released in which country and with which tracks.  It then proceeds to list nine different track listings - I'm not their biggest fan, but even I feel they're being a little short-changed here (and no, I'm not about to start editing it).  It also tells us it managed to shift 900k copies over here - which is again higher numbers than I was expecting for it.  Did everyone just buy every album in 1996? (except us, it appears).

"Customers also listened to" Ronan, Stephen and Westlife - nobody expected that now, did they?  I appreciate that bands like this fill a need and it's very much not aimed at me, but I still have to say this was considerably less impressive than I was expecting.  Maybe that's why Take That have endured whilst Boyzone haven't.

24/11/96 - An album I actually LIKED!
08/12/96 - Another astonishingly popular album