Mummy don't know daddy's getting hot

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

03/02/23 : Gloria - Sam Smith

I like "Unholy" which was the second single off this album, so I had reasonable expectations for it - but I have read a couple of reviews that weren't exactly glowing, so let's see.

Hmmm.  I mean, it's perfectly fine but most of these tracks did not take them long to write - they've got a nice voice, but some of them even manage to make you forget that.  Also, unusually for me, I thought it was a bit short - 33 minutes of mostly similar tracks just feels half-hearted.  Apart from "Unholy", the only other tracks that aren't pretty average MoR, slightly enhanced by some nice warbling are "I'm Not Here To Make Friends" which I liked, "Gimme", which I very much didn't and "Gloria", which is just a bit odd.  The album also gets points deducted for featuring Ed Sheeran.  Sigh.   All in all, a bit of a disappointment.

We are, of course, at #1 in the charts this week - I suspect it'll be around for a bit yet.  The rest of the top five are The Weeknd (why are so many people STILL listening to that?), Taylor, SZA and Eminem (ditto) and we have another new entry with Bob Dylan at #9 with the snappily titled "The Bootleg Series Vol. 17: Fragments – Time Out of Mind Sessions (1996–1997)" which Wikipedia tells me is the "15th instalment in the ongoing Bob Dylan Bootleg Series" - and yes, I had to check why it was the 15th (the first three volumes were all released together).

Wikipedia has more than you usually get for a recent album, but most of it just seems to talk about the singles that have been released.  It also takes a lot of space listing all the backing singers (52!) and string musicians (25) involved on the album.  The critical reception was mixed - it feels like people either thought it was the best thing he'd done or it was a missed opportunity.  But the general public went mad for it, #1 in Ireland and Australia and #7 in the US.

"Customers also listened to" Meghan Traynor, Miley Cyrus, Ava Max and Mimi Webb - a slightly peculiar mix.  Last time we met Sam, my expectations were low but they were exceeded - unfortunately, this time things were the other way round.

27/01/23 - A very Arcticmonkeysesque sound
10/02/23 - That don't impress me much

Comments

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