When the head of state didn't play guitar

Continuing my trip back through the 2006 album charts.

18/06/06 : Smile It Confuses People - Sandi Thom

Sandi's an interesting case - she had that single that was everywhere (the name of which escapes me just at the minute, but I'm guessing I'll be reminded soon enough) which I remember being "OK, I guess" but didn't seem to have anything particularly special to it.  To the point that my suspicions were raised that the "lone girl using MySpace to push against the system" was actually "the system using MySpace to keep everyone in their place", so I pretty much just left her (or the system) to it.  So, I'm mildly curious to listen to and read up about this...

Well, it's all perfectly fine - she's got a nice voice (quite Joan Baez-like) and the songs are pleasant enough although they definitely hark back rather than pushing things forward.  And "I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair)" is nice enough, but I'm still mystified as to why everyone went mad for it.  It's quite interesting to compare this album with Nerina Pallot's Fires which is at #49 this week - they're actually pretty similar except that, for me, Nerina's effort is just that little bit better in all regards.  And was, obviously, considerably less successful.

We're at #2 in the charts this week on her second week of a 21 week run, having debuted at #1 last week.  The rest of the top five are Keane (a new entry), The Feeling, Paul Simon and Nelly Furtado (another new entry, and I bet it's also way better than this album) - there are no more new entries in the top ten, with the next highest being The Dixie Chicks (as they were back then) at #12.

Wikipedia doesn't have a lot to say on the album - it exists, everyone loved "I Wish..." (but none of the other singles) and it did pretty well commercially.  Looking at her entry, it tells us that "I Wish..." was first released in late 2005 (on a record label at which her mother was a director) and nobody paid any attention to it, but then she started with all the internet stuff and things took off from there - although some mean journalists have questioned whether she really got any internet hits until the mainstream media started writing about how she was getting loads of internet hits.  I guess we'll never know the truth but it sounds like she's still out there somewhere putting music out - good luck to her, wherever she is!

"Customers also listened to" Nizlopi (another band known mostly for the one single), Lucy Spraggan and Eliza Doolittle - I can't tell you much about any of them.  I didn't mind Sandi's effort - but it definitely fell into the "harmless enough" category for me and I've no real idea why it was so popular.  

11/06/06 - A somewhat dated album, even at time of release
25/06/06 - Not as annoying as you might expect

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