I'd like to run away from you

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

08/07/73 : Never Never Never - Shirley Bassey


I'm obviously aware of our Shirl, but really only from her Bond themes - and I always forget she's done three (but, to be honest, Moonraker is best forgotten about on all fronts).  I'm expecting some average to fine songs elevated by her voice - perfectly listenable but not really my sort of thing.

And yeah, that's kinda where we are, with a but - it's not my sort of thing, but I really quite liked it.  She's still very much stuck in the 60s, but to be honest it's been so nice to hear a female voice that she could have come out with anything and I'd have been glad to hear it.  The title track, "I Won't Last A Day Without You" and (of course) "Killing Me Softly" were the stand-out tracks for me, but it's all pretty good.  I also enjoyed "No Regrets" and was surprised to read that this wasn't originally a Walker Brothers track - it was written and first recorded by Tom Rush, a US folk/blues singer.  I listened to this album in the early morning when it was very dark outside and the music seemed to fit perfectly with that - it feels very intimate.  Overall, I enjoyed this more than I was expecting - they're generally good songs, arranged well with her classy voice shining through.

We're all the way down at #20 again on its seventh week of a ten week run, having peaked at #10 in its initial week.  The top five this week are That'll Be The Day, Peters & Lee, George Harrison, Perry Como and Bowie (of course!) and the highest new entry is Mike Oldfield all the way down at #31.  And that's the only new entry in the chart this week, although there are NINE re-entries.  But - not only are we listening to a woman, we also get to see ANOTHER woman in the charts with Liza Minelli appearing at #35.  Wow - the women are taking over with there being SIX of them in the charts this week!

Wikipedia manages to have quite a few sentences on the entry - which I've read a few times and not found any content at all.  The album exists, basically - but you already knew that.

"Customers also listened to" Cilla Black, Lulu and Eartha Kitt - some powerful voices there and no mistake.  But are they as powerful as Shirley's?  I was surprised at how much I liked this - it felt like a nice intimate set in a dark club and it shows off her great voice well.

01/07/73 - Very much of its time
15/07/73 - Not as bad as I feared

Comments

  1. Anonymous6 November 2022 at 12:05

    Don’t be ridonkulous, she’s famous from Decksanddrumsandrockandroll by The Propellerheads!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous6 November 2022 at 14:07

    Well at least you didn’t say Kanye…

    ReplyDelete

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