I wish I could've known that forever was a lie

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

25/11/22 : Sonder - Dermot Kennedy

I always forget my opinion of Dermot - is he the slightly wet male singer-songerwriter type for which I can see no reason for their existence (eg James Bey, Tom Odell, Ben Howard) or is there something more to him which surprises me, but not enough that I actually remember there's more to him?  There's only one way to find out...

Ah, he's the latter - he uses an beepy rather than acousticy background to slightly lift him above the morass.  But only slightly.  It's "fine" but, writing this up two days after listening to it, I remember absolutely none of it - I seem to recall it was mostly about finding and losing your soulmate, but I can't be bothered checking.  If you like Dermot, then you like him - and the good news is you don't have to compete with me for his affection.

We're at #1 with a new entry this week (the things that top the charts these days, really) - I struggle to imagine it will be around for long (poor Louis is already down to #25).  The rest of the top five are Taylor, Bruce, Andre Rieu & Johan Strauss (a new entry, but really?) and Drake & 21 Savage (that's STILL here?).  We have one more new entry in the top ten with Nickelback (#8) and there's also a somewhat surprising re-entry with Queen's The Miracle (#6) - ah, it's been re-released with a previously unheard Freddie song, so I guess that explains that.

Wikipedia doesn't have a lot on the album, but it was more interesting than I was expecting - sonder is a neologism (and, surprisingly, I knew what that meant - it sounds a lot fancier than "new word", doesn't it) that refers to "realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own".  Also, the release of the album was delayed due to the postal strike - I assume there were good operational reasons for doing so, but I'm struggling to think of them.  The absolute best thing about the entry is the critical reviews though - one said "it's music almost completely devoid of edge, almost impressively so" whilst another "concluded that while it "does exactly what you'd expect", he found himself "wishing it did something else"".  It's done OK commercially though and, unsurprisingly, it got to #1 in Ireland.

"Customers also listened to" Ava Max, Ella Henderson, Ellie Goulding and Sigrid - that seems unexpectedly elevated company to me.  I appreciate that people like this sort of thing, but personally I just don't see the point to it - horses for courses, I guess.

18/11/22 - Perfectly fine unless you hate this sort of thing
02/12/22 - Skilfully done, but not really for me