You wanna speak, but it’s best that you don’t

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

02/12/22 : This Is What I Mean - Stormzy

I admire the man and his music, but can't say I quite get it - but it's not really aimed at me, so I can live with that (and I'm sure he can as well).  I'm still interested to listen to this though.

It's got an interesting opening track ("Fire + Water") which moves through several phases and segues nicely into the next track - I can’t say I really understood what it was saying though.  And "Holy Spirit" is a nice track with its gospel choir, but most of the album was a lot slower than I expected - it's skilful, but it feels like it avoids a lot of what I think he does well.  One example where he does let things fly a bit more is "My Presidents Are Black" and I liked that one more as a result.

No matter what the tempo though, the tracks are all very well constructed (with fine bass) and he name checks a load of people from all eras - this really ain’t been thrown together in two minutes.  And anyone who namechecks Neneh Cherry and Buffalo Stance is fine by me.  There's also a strong religious theme throughout, which isn't generally my sort of thing but I have to admit to having had a bit of a religious epiphany as a result of this album.  Yes, there has to be a God because if Stormzy hadn’t got to #1, I’d have had to listen to Cliff's Xmas album…

Yes, we're at #1 with a new entry this week - I think we'll see it around for a bit yet.  The rest of the top five are Cliff (another new entry), Taylor, the Bocelli family and Broooooce and we have another new entry in the top ten with The Cure at #9.  Bizarrely, the next new entry is Tom Petty at #77 with a live album of a 1997 concert - I assume some kind of vinyl reissue shenanigans are responsible.  I'm also going to call out Rumours climbing from #42 to #24 in the week of the death of Christine McVie - I had a quick listen to do my bit for that.

Back to Stormzy, Wikipedia doesn't have an awful lot on the album, but it was interesting to see the huge number of people involved, some of whom I even recognised and they surprised me - Jacob Collier, who is super talented but he doesn't seem very hippy-hoppy-grimey and Laurie Anderson, who's 75 now and plays the viola on one track, which seems particularly random.

"Customers also listened to" Aitch, Central Cee, Burna Boy and, errr, Sigrid.  Of course.  This is an impressively put together album that I'm sure his legions of fans will love - for me it's an interesting listen but no more than that.

25/11/22 - I just don't see the point
09/12/22 - Giving his fans what they want

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