Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon?

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts.

04/08/68 : Honey - Andy Williams

I like Andy's voice and some of his tracks (particularly "Music To Watch Girls By") but this is totally the kind of album that the rules were set up to avoid - it's looks to be a set of 60s cabaret staples covers.  But things have had to be somewhat relaxed for 1968 (otherwise I suspect we'd run out of albums in some weeks) so here we are - I'm expecting to like some of the tracks, but to find the whole thing a bit of a drag.

I actually didn't know quite a few of the tracks, but it doesn't really matter because they're all pretty much delivered in the same style - he could sing the phonebook and it would sound the same.  The one exception is "Up Up And Away" which is super cheesy but in a kinda cool way - the rest of it I can mostly take or leave, but he ABSOLUTELY murders "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" (I'd even take Engelbert's version in preference).  The other track we've previously seen this year is "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" which I'm glad to say emerges mostly unscathed (but he's no S&G).  All in all, this is a very inessential album!  And WHAT ON EARTH has he got round his neck on the album cover?

We're at #8 in the charts this week on his sixth week of a seventeen week run, with it having peaked at #4 in its fourth week.  The top five this week were Tom Jones, Simon & Garfunkel, The Small Faces, John Mayall and TCWOAB, the highest (and only) new entry was The Family (#39) and we have a couple of new women - one mentioned (Dionne Warwick) and one featured (Jacqui McShee in Pentangle), taking the counts to 7 and 7.  We also have a special mention for Christine Perfect (later McVie) who makes a second appearance with a different group - Chicken Shack, who I can tell you nothing about in the slightest.

Wikipedia has more on the album (which is his 22nd!) than I was expecting, but most of it is saying that this is a bit of a departure for Andy because before he had made some quite intelligent and interesting song choices, but on this one he just went for recent chart hits.  His fans, however, cared not one jot...

"Customers also listened to" Perry Como, Pat Boone, Robert Goulet and Richard Chamberlain - I can't claim to be an expert on any of them and I'm perfectly happy with that.  I know slightly more about Andy but I get the feeling that it's about 1% of his overall output that I'm aware of and 0.1% that I actually like.  And this album did absolutely nothing to up the "like" percentage.

28/07/68 - A bit of a cash-in
11/08/68 - All sorts on this one!

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