And then later, when it gets dark, we go home

Continuing my trip back through the 2010 album charts.

21/11/10 : The Gift - Susan Boyle

Hmmm - I think I could probably argue my way out of listening to this because it's an album of covers (or at least "not original" songs - I'm not sure carols really count as covers).  It's also not the album that happened after her Britain's Got Talent appearance, so it doesn't obviously win the "culturally relevant" argument.  But I've never had to experience one of her albums before, so I'm intrigued as to what it's like - I'm actually expecting it to be not terrible, if not exactly essential.

Well, it's a hmmm again.  You know when you go to church (and I'm not saying this happens very often for me) and the organist obviously isn't very good so the hymns are played at half speed?  Well, it's like a whole album of that - all the songs just need to get a move on.  And they can't blame the organist here, so either Susan can't sing very fast or it was a artistic choice - either way I didn't like it.  Apart from that, it's not awful but I'd have to say her voice doesn't really come across that strongly - you certainly don't get the "wow" factor you get on that BGT appearance.  So yeah, not terrible - but worse than I was expecting and considerably less essential.

We're at #3 in the charts this week on her second week of an eleven week run, having debuted at the top last week.  The rest of the top five are all new entries with Take That, Rihanna, Andre Rieu and P!nk (a best of) and we've got one more in the top ten with Bruce Springsteen (#7).  We've also got a new entry from Russell Watson (#14) - which is only worth mentioning because he had one in the last entry as well.

Wikipedia doesn't have a lot on the album, but there is one bizarre nugget of information,  "Do You Hear What I Hear?" features Amber Stassi, who I wasn't previously aware of - and it turns out the reason for this was "Susan's Search" competition where you had to upload a video of yourself singing and the winner would get to sing a duet with Susan.  And you have one guess who won.  Unsurprisingly, the critics didn't like the album but the public didn't care.  And they really didn't care - particularly in the US, which somewhat surprised me.  It debuted at #1, spent 4 weeks at the top, sold over two million copies and was #5 in the '11 year end chart.  Lordy!

"Customers also listened to" Father Ray Kelly, Michael Crawford, Charlotte Church and Katherine Jenkins.  Yes, quite.  If you like this sort of thing, then this feels like an example of it but it's nowhere near the best example out there - and the whole "slowing down the already slow songs" thing is just bizarre.

14/11/10 - An album that's there if you need it
28/11/10 - A surprisingly bland offering

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