Ring out the old, bring in the new

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

27/10/96 : Human Nature - Dina Carroll

I seem to recall Dina had a lovely voice but, for me, never recorded absolutely top notch material - with the exception of "The Perfect Year", which is a lovely track.  So I'm expecting this to be fine, but somewhat forgettable - although I'll obviously be happy if it pulls some blinders out of somewhere.

Firstly, we have to negotiate the slight issue that the album isn't on my streaming platform of choice (Amazon) - which is unusual.  It is on Spotify though, which is even more peculiar, but does at least resolve the issue.  The album is, for the most part, exactly what you'd expect - very smooth, not quite to the point of dullness but certainly struggling to stand out.  There are a few exceptions - all of which surprised me in some way.  "The Perfect Year" is the stand-out track -  I must have known it came from Sunset Boulevard because I've seen it on stage (with EP) but I'd completely forgotten.  "I Don't Want To Talk About It" is always going to stand out and Dina belts out a good torch song version - but I'd forgotten (again!) this wasn't a Rod Stewart original (it was by Crazy Horse in 1971 - and unsurprisingly the original is more Rod than EBTG or Dina).  And finally "Living For The Weekend" which is considerably more upbeat than the rest of the album and was co-written with David Morales.  We owned her debut album, So Close, but never came close to owning this - 1/10.

We're at #6 in the charts this week with it being in its second week of a 13 week run, having peaked at #2 in the previous week - not a bad effort but not a patch on the 70 weeks that So Close managed.  Above it were Beautiful South (a new entry), Simply Red, Celine Dion, Phil Collins (another new entry) and Crowded House - that's quite middle aged dinner party top five, isn't it?  A more interesting new entry is Babybird at #9 - I don't think anyone ever knew quite what to do him (including himself).

Wikipedia doesn't have an awful lot on the album but makes it all sound like life was tickety-boo for the lass.  However, her entry tells a slightly different story - it starts off by telling us that it was all going swimmingly and at one point she had two singles in the top 10 concurrently and was the only woman in the 90s to achieve this.   However, whilst recording this album she discovered she had otosclerosis, which required an operation to replace an eardrum - which she held off having done until she'd finished the album, but then had to go back to work immediately to promote the album.  She then took a bit of a break to make her third album and decided that "Son Of A Preacher Man" would be a good single to come back with.  And then Dusty died, so that got canned.  And then she decided that she didn't really like the album.  And then her record company shelved the album.  And then her management team dropped her.  Oh dear - that's not a great run.  I just hope she's happy these days, sat somewhere on a big pile of money...

"Customers also listened to" Martine McCutcheon and Michelle Gayle (hmmm) and Beverley Knight and Lisa Stansfield (that's more like it!).  Dina's got a lovely voice and delivery and it was nice to be reminded of her, but the material isn't quite up to scratch for me, I'm afraid.

20/10/96 - A welcome opportunity for reappraisal
03/11/96 - A truly terrible album