I'm bringin' sexy back

Continuing my trip back through the 2006 album charts.

01/10/06 : FutureSex/LoveSounds - Justin Timberlake

I can't say I'm an aficionado, but I don't mind a bit of JT - not sure I've ever listened to a full album though, so I'll be interested to see if there's much variety to it.

Hmmm - there's more variety than I was expecting and it is very well put together and produced, but it's all a bit unrelenting in its smoothness and its sexiness.  So "I don't mind a bit of JT" is a good way of putting it - a whole album just gets a bit much.  He doesn't help himself by frontloading the album with the best tracks which are the title track and "SexyBack" - after that they all somewhat drift into each other.  And 66 minutes (or 80 minutes for the deluxe version) is definitely too much for me.  So I'm afraid I'll just be sticking with infrequent listens of "Cry Me A River" and "SexyBack" for the foreseeable...

We're at #6 in the charts this week on this third week of a fine 61 week run, having debuted at #1.  The top five this week are Scissor Sisters, The Fratellis, Razorlight, Lily Allen and Snow Patrol - the top fives have definitely improved as we've moved away from Xmas.  We're still not getting many new releases though - the highest one this week is Jamelia (remember her?) at #20 followed by Lupe Fiasco (he's still going) at #31.

Wikipedia has a frankly huge amount (426 milliPeppers) most of which I have to admit I couldn't be bothered reading - it feels like most of it is along the "difficult second album/new creative journey" lines.  Yadda yadda yadda - although I do think there's more truth to that here than in many other cases.  Whatever the journey, most critics liked the end point - although I go along with "laudable, but overreaching".  The public though, loved it, top five in a load of countries (including #1 in the US) with it selling over 10 million copies globally - it was #25 in the 2006 UK year end list in 2006 and improved to #16 in the 2007 year end list.

"Customers also listened to" Usher, Outkast, Timbaland (who produced this) and Nelly Furtado (which isn't an obvious connection).  This is quite an impressive album, but not one I particularly enjoyed and I won't be revisiting it.

24/09/86 - I liked this a lot more than I was expecting to
08/10/06 - One I know and like

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