It's hard to say that I'd rather stay awake when I'm asleep

Continuing my trip back through the 2010 album charts.

21/02/10 : Ocean Eyes - Owl City

Coming to you from the group who is a common pop quiz answer because no-one ever remembers who sang that firefly song, an album that I suspect might prove to be a little too much - but I'm happy to be proved wrong.

But, before we get there, we have an interesting one to consider before ultimately rejecting - Forever Vienna by Andre Rieu.  At this point, Andre (a Dutch violinist/conductor) had been doing his classical music schtick for years and was very popular globally, drawing huge audiences from across the music spectrum - but we'd been completely oblivious to his charms.  Until this album happened, which somehow got to #2 - and since then he's been somewhat of a fixture to this day (six of his last seven albums have made the top ten).  And I was so intrigued as to what this album has that I checked it out - and I can declare it to be perfectly fine.  But quite why it would draw in the masses is a complete and utter mystery to me...

So, on to Owl City - would a whole album be too much?  Short answer - yes.  Even if all the songs were as good as "Fireflies", then the slightly wobbly twee vocals would drag - but, unfortunately, they're not.  None of the songs are dreadful, but conversely none of them are great either, except for "Fireflies" - oh well, nice try lads.  Several of the songs also feature some hideous puns - which isn't generally something I'd object to, so it gives you an idea how bad they must be.

We're at #7 with a new entry in the charts this week on the start of a fifteen week run, which feels somewhat generous to me.  The top five this week are Glee (up from #68!), Gaga, Florence, Alicia and Paolo, with Andre at #6 and the next highest new entry being Peter Gabriel (#12) with Scratch My Back, which is a very peculiar selection of covers.

Wikipedia has more than you might expect on the album, but most of it is about "Fireflies" or how that track made the album way more successful than expected.  And boy was it, getting to #8 in the US, selling over a million copies (and "Fireflies" got to #1 on the singles chart).  The critics were kinda mixed on it, but for me, AllMusic hit the nail on the head with "a handful of ballads add some sense of variety to the album's pace, but Owl City is largely a vehicle for the one song Adam Young knows how to make".  I also learned that Owl City were from the US - for some reason I always thought they were from the UK.

"Customers also listened to" OneRepublic, Bastille, American Authors and Fun - of the ones I know there are both similarities and differences with Owl City, which doesn't really surprise me because I don't really think there's anyone really quite like Owl City.  And for the early '10s they were VERY popular in the US with four top twenty albums in that period but there's absolutely no danger of me bumping into any others though - which is somewhat of a relief having experienced this one.

14/02/10 - Smooth, but doesn't hit the spot
28/02/10 - I've always liked this one