All I want is everything - am I asking too much?

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

19/05/96 : Slang - Def Leppard


Like Bon Jovi's effort from a couple of weeks ago, 1996 feels past Def Leppard's glory days.  But maybe, like Bon Jovi, I won't mind this at all (if not really understanding the fuss).

Hmmm.  They're trying to do a bit more on this than they did on Hysteria - and in this case, at first listen, more is definitely not more.  I actually didn't mind "All I Want Is Everything" but most of it gets pretty tiresome (although I'm not exactly a massive fan of Hysteria either).  And I really didn't need the deluxe edition at over 2 hours long (I didn't make it to the end, I'm afraid).  And that's one weird looking album cover - that's obviously the reason we never bought it taking us to 9/33 at the end of a 10 week run of non-ownership (yes - we actually owned the next one!)

We're at #5 with a new entry this week, peaking at the start of an 11 week run with the rest of the top five made up by George (another new entry), Alanis, Ash and Oasis.  There were no more new entries in the top ten - the next highest was yet another bloody pan pipes album at #26.  This one's from Free The Spirit who apparently had a #2 album in 1995 - who buys these things? (apart from shops).

Back to Def Leppard, Wikipedia tells me that since their previous album, various members of the band had experienced divorce, death of parent, arrest for spousal abuse and arrest for assault - so they were obviously having a right old giggle at the time.  They decided that, because grunge had happened, they had to try something new - fair play to the lads for giving a go, but it didn't work for me, I'm afraid.  The critics were mixed - some loved it, some thought it too undirected and one said "even the ballads lack the usual Def Leppard sense of having been written for lead-lined hippos to sing" (whatever that means).  It did well enough commercially though - selling over a million copies globally and getting to #14 in the US.

"Customers also listened to" Gun, White Lion, Tesla and Warrant - all of whom I can tell you absolutely nothing about it.  And I can't say I know a lot more about Def Leppard, but I have at least heard of them - and listened to two of their albums now.  And this one comes a distant second for me - sorry.  I'm impressed they're still hanging in there though!

12/05/96 - Yeah. this was nice
26/05/96 - Just a bit meh for me

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