Came in for the embers - stayed out for the breeze

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

12/05/23 : Subtract - Ed Sheeran 

I said last week that this is where we'd be - I bet you're impressed that my unparalleled knowledge of the music industry enabled me to predict that.  You probably haven't heard of Ed - he's a little known singer-songwriter who I predict great things for.  On a slightly more serious note, I quite liked his early stuff but can't claim to say I enjoy much of it these days - he's a bit too magpie-ish for me.  Having said that, I do admire him for standing up and fighting for his music against people who think they own a three chord sequence.  I can still assure you though that doesn't mean I'm looking forward to listening to this...

But.  I didn't mind this at all.  Wonders will never cease!  He's not had the best of years (his pregnant wife had a cancer scare along with the death of Jamal Edwards) and it sounds like he's just singing this from the heart.  I didn't particularly like "Moving" but apart from that I thought it was a nice enough set of songs - not ground-breaking and I doubt they would have done anything if released by anyone else.  But at least they're not bloody "Galway Girl"...

We're (unsurprisingly) at #1 with a new entry this week - I suspect he'll be hanging around for a bit.  The rest of the top five are Nines (I'm pleased he held on to the #2 spot), The Weeknd, Tunde (another new entry) and Taylor (she has NINE albums in the top 100) and the next highest new entry is from Tom Meighan (#17 - the ex-lead singer of Kasabian).

Wikipedia doesn't have loads on the album yet, but I'm sure that will change as it hangs around.  The critics were nice enough about it - most of them were a bit "it's a change, without being all that different" about it but amusingly NME said it "doesn't contain anything as crass as 2017's cod-Irish folk song 'Galway Girl'".  Unsurprisingly, it's done pretty well globally - except in Lithuania, where it's only reached #26.

"Customers also listened to" Jonas Brothers, Niall Horan, Sam Smith and Meghan Traynor - I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting there, but it wasn't that lot.  I thought this was a "nice" album and I'm pleased he didn't try too many tricks with it - but I can't say I'll be revisiting it very often (if at all).

05/05/23 - Fun, diverting and honest
19/05/23 - Much more enjoyable than expected

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm not wishing I was back in the USA, coz I come from Morecambe and the skies are grey

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 15/11/24 : Earth To Grace - Massive Wagons I will listen to the new entry at #1, but there's absolutely NO WAY I'm writing a whole entry on it - so instead we have this which I know absolutely nothing about. But it has to be better than the abomination at #1. Well, it's something you don't hear too much of these days - I guess "hard rock" is probably as good a description as any. It’s not going to win any awards for musical complexity but it’s quite catchy - I was r eminded of Gary Moore in his heavier days that teenage me used to like. It also certainly doesn't take itself too seriously - "Free And Easy" tells us "I don't shoot guns, it's not healthy - I drive a Ford C-Max I got off my dad and it's filthy" and "Rabbit Hole" offers up an amusingly sceptical take on conspiracy theories and then abruptly ends "Auf wiedersehen, adios - this song fucking ...
Read more

I saw your mum - she forgot that I existed

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 22/12/23 :  Stick Season - Noah Kahan Well, this week surprises us on a couple of fronts.  Firstly, and probably the least expected, this is possibly the album I've heard most this year - because obviously I'm a massive Noah fan. Well, it might not surprise you to hear it's not me but my delightful daughter - but you might be surprised to hear just how much my youngest absolutely LOVES Noah, particularly given his folkiness.  She's got tickets to see him next year and (excluding festivals) they're the most expensive gig tickets I've ever bought.  But despite having heard the album loads, I've never actually listened to it, so I'm interested to see what I make of it on a one-on-one basis. You know what - the headline is that, having actually listened to it I can report that, at least in places, I liked this way more than I previously did.  I listened to it over headphones for the first time and t...
Read more

Time is the fruit of patience

Image
Continuing my trip back through the 1990 album charts. 27/05/90 : Passion And Warfare : Steve Vai I know that Steve Vai is a highly respected guitarist, but I've got no more clue about him than that.  I also don't have a great history with albums from highly respected guitarists, so I'd have to say my confidence isn't sky high going in to this one (and nothing would have convinced me to buy it - 7/32). Ohmigod, this is rubbish.  The guitar playing is indeed of a very high quality, but man cannot live on guitar playing alone and everything else about it is just pretentious bombast.  "The Audience Is Listening" deserves a specific mention for being particularly rubbish, with a teacher introducing "young Steve Vai" to the class to play a lovely tune and then providing an increasingly histrionic running commentary on how much she doesn't like it.  I can imagine he's very impressive live, but such virtuosity often doesn't translate onto an alb...
Read more