Just gonna stand there and watch me burn?

Continuing my trip back through the 2010 album charts.

29/08/10 : Recovery - Eminem

Our fifth visit with Mr Mathers (and we've studiously ignored a couple of best-ofs on plenty of occasions) - I've heard this album is decent enough and drew him out of a bit of a slump, but I've not heard much of his from this period so can't state anything with certainly.  So let's see, shall we?

Hmm - it's OK, but doesn't seem like his best stuff to me.  The rapping is still top notch - he really can spit those words out in a hurry, but the tracks don't seem quite up to his best with the obvious exception of "Love The Way You Lie", which is a very fine track indeed (and well followed up with a Part II on this album).  The rest of them aren't dreadful and seem to display less rampant misogyny and homophobia  than some of his other stuff, but there wasn't anything obvious to drag me back.  I do like the album cover though - it feels very poetic.

We're at #1 in the charts this week on his tenth week of a 53 week run, with this being it's sixth week at the top (and it spent the first eleven weeks at either #1 or #2).  It managed another six week run in '11, a two week run in '14 and a single week in '16 - a bizarre mix indeed.  The rest of the top five were Plan B (a fine album we'll be seeing soon), Iron Maiden (unfortunately, I'll be getting to see this as well), Arcade Fire (and this one!) and Eliza Doolittle (who looks like she'll be one step away from being chosen in four separate weeks, but misses out on a write-up).  And we have a new entry that sneaks into the top ten which is The Klaxons (at #10) and I'm going to mention the next one at #12 because it's just odd - who was buying a Bay City Rollers best-of in 2010?

Wikipedia has loads on the album (389 milliPeppers) most of which is incredibly pointless detail - but I liked the fact that the album was dedicated "To anyone who's in a dark place tryin' to get out. Keep your head up... It does get better!".  I was surprised to see that P!nk is on the album (duetting on "Won't Back Down") - that's up there with the use of Haddaway on "No Love", which I really wasn't expecting.  The critics were mostly nice enough about it, but some were a bit down on it - I liked the double-edged comment that he was "framing his misogyny, homophobia and all-round bigotry with an undeniable sense of empathy and humanity".  Commercially, it did very well indeed, selling over ten million copies globally and becoming the first album to sell more than a million digital copies (I wonder how many of those are still accessible by the purchasers?).  It got to #1 in a load of countries and made the top ten in most - except for Mexico, where it only got to #34 (I expect he's been rude about Mexico more than once in the past).  And it was #9 on the UK year-end chart and #2 on the US version.

"Customers also listened to" Jay Z, Dr Dre, Coolio and 50 Cent - no major surprises there.  But Eminem remains my favourite of the big name rappers, even though I can't say there's anything here to tempt me away from his earlier stuff.

22/09/10 - Not for me
05/09/10 - Well done, but not for everyone