Here I am, a rabbit hearted girl - frozen in the headlights

Continuing my trip back through the 2010 album charts.

21/03/10 : Lungs - Florence + The Machine

I didn't strictly "own" this album but I certainly listened to it plenty of times - I remember liking it a lot, but I've not visited it in many a long year so it should be nice heading back to it.

Oooh - yeah, this is a FINE album.  "Dog Days Are Over" is certainly a strong opener - there's good use of variation throughout, which is even truer for "Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)" so this is a strong opening pair indeed.  I also particularly like "Kiss With A Fist" (not about domestic violence apparently, which I'd always assumed it was), "Girl With One Eye" and "You've Got The Love" but, for me, there isn't really a weak track on there.  Florence has such a distinctive voice that I sometimes think people forget how good a job The Machine do in supporting her but there are some great backing bits on this.  As you might be able to tell, I like this album, although I'm not sure I'm convinced by the lungs on the album cover (but I like the rest of it).

We're at #8 in the charts on its 37th week of a 176 week run - it spent its first five weeks at #2 (thanks to Michael Jackson), but finally made it to #1 in its 28th week.  And it's managed another twenty weeks in the charts over the years - last being seen in 2019.  The top five this week were Gaga, Glee (up from #91!), Boyzone, Gorillaz and Alicia (I think she's going to get mentioned every week for the rest of the year) and the highest new entry this week were The Sugababes at #14.

Wikipedia has a massive amount on the album (323 milliPeppers), - although a lot of it is gives us the track listings for TWELVE different versions that were released.  It also talks a lot about how Florence didn't quite know what she wanted to do in the music business, trying out country, folk and hip-hop before deciding on building The Machine and it also introduced me to this "interesting" previous version of "Kiss With A Fist".  The critics were keen on it, with one declaring "the best bits feel like being chased through a moonless night by a sexy moor witch" - and who doesn't know what that feels like?  It was also nominated for the Mercury prize and won the Brit Award for Best British album and did well commercially, getting into the top twenty in a load of countries around the world, including #14 in the US and it was #8 in the UK year-end chart.

"Customers also listened to" The Ting Tings, Of Monsters And Men, MIA and The Killers - which is not the mix I was expecting at all (although I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting).  Florence & her Machine have continued making fine music over the years (we last saw them last year), but there's a reasonable argument they've never repeated the highs of their debut - it's a fine album indeed, although I can appreciate it's possibly a bit much for some people.

14/03/10 - One I remember liking, but nothing more
28/03/10 - I wanted to like it more than I did