I'm only happy when it's complicated

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

14/04/96 : Garbage - Garbage

What an odd concept Garbage were - but they put some decent tunes out, plenty of which I seem to recall were on this album.  Which I've not heard in years so was looking forward to revisiting, but before that...

At #7 - Mike & The Mechanics have an album called "Hits".  To which my first thought was "is that use of the plural strictly accurate?" - quick research suggests that it probably is, although it depends upon your definition of "hit".  They've had 5 top 30 singles over the years, but only one top 10 which was obviously "The Living Years".  It made it to #2 in '89 and can consider itself very unlucky to be kept off the top for 3 weeks by Marc Almond & Gene Pitney's "Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart", which is an OK track but not a "#1 for four weeks" kind of a track.  But apart from that one they've not exactly churned out memorable tracks, so I'm perfectly happy to reject this album for many reasons and just move on to Garbage.

And yeah, it's pretty good.  The singles "Only Happy When It Rains", "Queer" and "Stupid Girl" stand out for me, but it's all got a similar "big" sound to it and our Shirley does a good job with the vocals.  If you're not aware of what Garbage sound like - well, they sound like Garbage really.  Depeche Mode with a female vocalist, maybe?  Try it - you might like it!  I do - and even better, I also own it, taking us to 12/38.

We're at #9 this week in their 21st week of a 67 week run, which strangely wasn't their first run.  They did six weeks at the end of '95 with it disappearing from view pretty quickly - and then "Queer" was released and it very slowly climbed back up the charts, peaking at #6 for the two weeks after this one.  It's managed 13 more runs over the years, totalling 57 weeks with it last being seen in 2021 - it's certainly hung around!  The top five this week are Take That, Ocean Colour Scene (a new entry - it managed 6 weeks at #2, but never made the top), Oasis, Alanis and Celine.  There were no more new entries in the top ten, but three more in the top 20 - Lionel Richie (#11), Vangelis (#14) and The Osmonds (#17), only one of which I feel the slightest inclination to listen to (and no, it's not The Osmonds).

Wikipedia had more on the album than I was expecting (214 milliPeppers) - a lot of which is on the background to the group.  Butch Vig and his two mates decided they needed a female singer for their band and saw Shirley in a video for an Angelfish track and decided she was the one.  They didn't have the faintest idea, but tracked her down - and she didn't have the faintest idea who they were but read up on them and agreed to meet.  And then on the very day they met, Kurt Cobain committed suicide, so everything got put on hold for a bit.  But they got there in the end - amusingly the old US dudes were trying to write songs from a woman's point of view of a woman and I can imagine Shirley doing much Scottish eye-rolling at their efforts.  This album did very well for itself though -  it may have "only" got to #20 in the US, but still sold 2.5 million copies over there.  And it got to #1 in New Zealand as well!

"Customers also listened to" Hole, The Breeders, Fiona Apple and Beck - and I imagine that the lot of them are hard work!  As, I suspect, are Garbage but I appreciate the sound they make - both this and Version 2.0 are fine albums which haven't really aged at all.

07/04/96 - Very much of its time, but an enjoyable visit
21/04/96 - Not quite my cup of tea