They love me when I'm home but I'm never there

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

26/08/22 : Close To Home - Aitch


From young Master Aitch, I'm expecting lyrical skillz that I don't hate, but don't find particularly relatable.  But, before we get to that, we have a compilation to consider for either cultural or timely relevance.

Yes - it's Steps' Platinum Collection.  Which is, unbelievably their SEVENTH "best of", with the first one having been released 21 years ago.  So, I think we don't need to invest too much time rejecting this - our time is much more usefully spent wondering WHO ON EARTH is "buying" this enough to get it to #1?  So let's move on from H to Aitch...

And well - it was OK, I guess.  There are nice enough backing tracks over which he burbles on, most of which I didn't overly listen to but I did go "ewww" at some of the sexual imagery deployed.  I was quite surprised to see him including a voicemail from his manager or accountant about receipts (who affectionately refers to him as "knobhead").  And, of course, I'm super pleased to see Ed Sheeran again.  I do wonder how much all these artists really want to work with the guy or just know it'll give them a billion more streams - he seems like a nice guy, but maybe not quite as cool as Mr Aitch and it's hard to imagine their paths crossing under normal circumstances.

We're at #2 in the charts with a new entry this week - the rest of the top five are Steps and Madonna (both new entries I'm fine never hearing), Harry and Panic At The Disco (another new entry that I could probably tolerate).  We have one more new entry in the top ten - Demi Lovato (#7) and that's probably the one I'd like the most of the lot.  We also have, for silver anniversarial (that's a word, right?) reasons, a re-entry at #6 - Oasis' Be Here Now, which is a perfectly dreadful album.  It does have an interesting Wikipedia entry though which notes that the critics loved it at the time - and the only reason anyone can think of for this is that they panned (WTS)MG? (which is at #38 this week) on release so decided to balance things out, but it's fair to say retrospective reviews are less positive ("one of the most agonizing listening experiences in pop music").

Back to Aitch, Wikipedia has, surprisingly, nothing on the album.  So let me just say that I am very suspicious about the whole mural episode - I do believe that Aitch knew nothing about it, but I'm pretty certain that whoever organised it knew exactly what would happen leaving Aitch having to express outrage and sort it out.  Hmmm.

"Customers also listened to" Burna Boy, Mabel, Drake and George Ezra - which is a peculiar mix to say the least.  Considering Aitch, I can see that a lot of people liked one of his singles so feel they should like this as well - whether they actually do, who am I to say?  But I bet if they really think about it, some might just admit they don't.

19/08/22 - Better than expected
02/09/22 - Good in places, odd in others

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I saw your mum - she forgot that I existed

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 22/12/23 :  Stick Season - Noah Kahan Well, this week surprises us on a couple of fronts.  Firstly, and probably the least expected, this is possibly the album I've heard most this year - because obviously I'm a massive Noah fan. Well, it might not surprise you to hear it's not me but my delightful daughter - but you might be surprised to hear just how much my youngest absolutely LOVES Noah, particularly given his folkiness.  She's got tickets to see him next year and (excluding festivals) they're the most expensive gig tickets I've ever bought.  But despite having heard the album loads, I've never actually listened to it, so I'm interested to see what I make of it on a one-on-one basis. You know what - the headline is that, having actually listened to it I can report that, at least in places, I liked this way more than I previously did.  I listened to it over headphones for the first time and t
Read more

She's got a wicked way of acting like St. Anthony

Image
I've done The Guardian's list of the top 50 albums of the year for the last three years and (mostly) enjoyed it, so here we go again with this year's list .  Last year I'd previously met ten of the list - it will be interesting to see whether that is repeated this year.   #50 : Crazymad, For Me - CMAT Coming off halfway between Jenny Lewis and Self Esteem, Dublin’s CMAT sets life’s greatest embarrassments to ritzy country showstoppers – the musical equivalent of piling your beehive high to distract from your tear-reddened eyes. On her second album, she tots up the price she has paid for her bad boyfriends, self-subjugation and knowing avoidance of less-than-romantic realities, always with mordant humour rather than self-pity: “I’m just some stewardess who feeds your pets / And does your dishes and pays your rent,” she sings on the delicate, harmony-heavy Such a Miranda. For all that she has lost in these songs – pride, love, literal cash – her perspective remains a firm
Read more

Croopied in the reames, shepherd gurrel weaves

Image
Continuing my trip down The Guardian's   top 50 albums of 2023 #30 : The Age Of Pleasure - Janelle Monáe Monáe’s last album, 2018’s Dirty Computer, saw the high-concept pop star returning to earth after several albums of space-age fantasia, showing a softer, fallible side for the rest time. Its songs were still divided into three categories – Reckoning, Celebration and Reclamation – indicating an artist who hadn’t quite let go of the structural safety rails. But on The Age of Pleasure, Monáe is resolutely grounded in pursuit of a new kind of body high. To the decadently rendered diasporic sounds of reggae, dancehall and Afrobeats, she hymns pleasure and desire, connecting (as did Jessie Ware also did this year) sex as self-empowerment and celebrating the kaleidoscopic nature of identity. Or, as she puts it on Phenomenal: “I’m lookin’ at a thousand versions of myself / And we’re all fine as fuck.” I have experienced a couple of Janelle albums and I found them somewhat inaccessible -
Read more