It's the wild, wild west - I'm doing my best

Continuing my trip back through the 2010 album charts.

14/02/10 : Soldier Of Love - Sade

Our third visit with Sade after the totally expected Diamond Life and the not so expected Love Deluxe - this is another one that I don't know (although I have heard the title track and seem to remember it's OK, but not great).  I quite like a bit of Sade, but I have to admit my expectations for this aren't super high, mostly because I suspect I'd have heard it at the time if was all that good.

And it's OK, but a bit forgettable on one listen.  Maybe I would get into the groove given enough dinner parties, but that feels unlikely to happen given that I don't  go to any dinner parties these days and, even if I did, they probably wouldn't play thirteen year old albums.  Her voice has matured nicely and it's the same old smooth sound but the songs didn't quite stick for me - I can't see me rushing back to this.  It was a nice album to meet on Valentine's Day though, I guess!

We're at #4 in the charts this week with a new entry on the start of an eight week run which wasn't very long for the time and nothing like her glory days - Diamond Life managed 99 weeks and Promise (which is another fine album) made it to #1.  The rest of the top five were Alicia, Andre Rieu, Paolo and Gaga and there's another new entry with Massive Attack (#6) with another one I've never heard of, but I imagine it's got some interesting sounds on it.

Wikipedia tells us this was their first music after a ten year hiatus - Sade was never one for the spotlight but she made just one public appearance in that time, picking up her OBE.  The band had all gone and got other jobs on other continents but it seems like she snapped her fingers and they dropped everything and rushed back to work with her - Wikipedia amusingly gets itself into a terrible tangle distinguishing between Sade (the person) and Sade (the band).  The critics generally liked it, but there were some that felt it all a little too understated.  As previously mentioned, we didn't exactly go mad for it over here but the rest of the world made up for us - she debuted at #1 in the US, selling over a million copies there and it was #1 in a load of other countries, selling a million more copies elsewhere globally (it was the second best selling album of the year by a UK artist, after Susan Boyle).  For comparison, it was #123 in our year-end chart but #14 in the US - and #1 in Poland!  We forget how successful she was in the US - allegedly she's the most successful UK female artist in terms of album sales over there (she would have been overtaken by Adele but streaming saved the day for her!)

"Customers also listened to" Phipp Hopp, Bruno Costa, Gervaso Silva and Remy Shand - OK, they've COMPLETELY lost me there.  I've a lot of love for Sade both for her music and her total maintenance of her privacy, but this album didn't quite hit the sweet spot for me - but it did make me listen to some of her older stuff, so all is good.

07/02/10 - Not so smooth, but understandably so
21/02/10 - Nope, I don't need this