How many train wrecks do we need to see?

Continuing my trip back through the 2006 album charts.

16/04/06 : In Between Dreams - Jack Johnson

Earlier this year, I blamed James Morrison for all the pointless male singer-songwriters around these days, hanging around just annoying me - but, having listened to his album, I had to take it all back because it wasn't that bad at all.  However, I am now expecting THIS to be that bad.

And oh yes, Jack is very much to blame for a lot of today's ills.  This is a very lightweight offering - it's some stoner surfer lazing around on the beach strumming on his guitar and singing nonsense lyrics.  I didn't mind the chorus of "Good People" but I also very much blame it for making everyone buy this album and just encouraging him.  So, it's a "no thank you very much" from me, Mr Johnson.

We're at #4 in the charts this week on its 51st(!) week of an 81(!) week run, which strangely wasn't its first run, having had a six week run on release in March '05 not getting any higher than #48.  It then had three weeks off and came back slightly stronger, peaking at #1 in its 50th week.  And I can think of absolutely no reason why so many people would have bought it.  The rest of the top five were The Streets (a new entry), Massive Attack, The Kooks and Corinne Bailey Rae (who I'm surprised we've not met yet!) and the next highest new entries were the slightly odd combination of Don Williams (#27) and Roberta Flack (#50), both of whom were born in the late 1930s.

Wikipedia doesn't have a lot to say on the album and probably all you need to know is these two sentences - "The album received generally mixed reviews from music critics. However, the album achieved considerable commercial success".  This was his third album but the first to chart in the UK - but "we" obviously got a taste for him because the first two then charted in September '05 (I suspect some record company promotion might have been involved).  It was also depressingly popular globally, getting to #2 in the US and selling over 5 million copies globally (and 1.5 million here - shame on us!).

"Customers also listened to" Matt Costa, Donavan Frankenreiter and Mason Jennings - and I'm pleased to say I've never heard of any of them.  Just no, thank you very much.

09/04/06 - Taken on the music alone, a pretty decent album
23/04/06 - One I was hoping to like more than I did

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