I believe the sun should never set upon an argument

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts.

14/11/99 : Affirmation - Savage Garden

I remember they had that single that was everywhere for a bit and then I think they pretty much disappeared, so I'm expecting this to have that single on it and a load of other stuff which isn't quite as good.  Before we get into it though, I've got one to mention that I had to skip over - Vonda Shepherd's Heart And Soul.  This was a collection of music from Ally MacBeal (which was astonishingly popular considering how shit it was) but it actually featured a reasonable amount of original music, so it made the grade.  However, I suspect the covers on it have either proven to be too much of licensing headache for the streaming services or just made it not worth the record company making the effort, so it's not available anywhere.  So I had to move on to Savage Garden, which neither of us have ever owned - 3/7.

And yes - there's that single, which is obviously called "Affirmation" and yeah, it's a good track.  And, amazingly I also recognised "I Knew I Loved You" - it's very Westlife, but not dreadful.  But most of this album is incredibly forgettable - it's just wet with soppy warbling vocals over very average backing tracks.  I guess it hit the spot for some, but I'm not entirely sure who - it doesn't feel like it has a natural home.  It's certainly not me - I found myself willing it to end waaaay before it finally did (although, I didn't mind the closing track - but it wasn't worth the wait).  That's also very much not a great album cover.

We're at #12 in the charts with a new entry this week on the start of a 28 week run - seems reasonable enough to me.  So it then took two weeks off and came back for a 46 week run - WHAT?!?  This was as high as it got in its first run but it peaked at #7 for two weeks in its second run - I assume that "Affirmation" (the single) was responsible.  The top five this week were Steps, Shania, Westlife and two new entries, Five and Queen's Greatest Hits III (which I'm not sure I even knew existed) and we have two more new entries in the top ten - Cher (#7) and the aforementioned Vonda Shepherd (#9).

Wikipedia has four paragraphs on the album and I've read them a few times and not managed to find any content at all.  Critical reception was generally "well, it's OK" but it did very well commercially - #1 in Australia, Canada and Sweden and #7 in the US (selling 3 million copies over there).

"Customers also listened to" The Corrs, Natalie Imbruglia, Wilson Phillips and Donna Lewis - I've never even heard of Donna but I'm guessing she's not Scandi death metal.  I can't quite decide if I'm disappointed by this album because I wasn't expecting to like it and I wasn't expecting it to be great, but I don't think it even came close to being just "not great" - however, ultimately, I think I just didn't care.  But the title track is good though, I can't deny them that.

07/11/99 - Not good
21/11/99 - Very much not my cup of tea