Is it because I lied when I was seventeen?

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts.

26/12/99 : The Man Who - Travis

We're starting a new year which I'm expecting to be a vast improvement on 1968 and I'm also pleased I can go back to paying attention to ownership ratios - I'm expecting something like 20%, but it might sneak higher with a following wind.  And we're starting the year at 100%, with an album that I remember being quite good, but I'd struggle to say I've revisited it in many a long year.

Well, let's just say whoever picked the singles from this album did a very good job in selecting the best tracks.  The others are "fine" but "Writing to Reach You", "Driftwood", "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" and "Turn" are far away the best tracks on here - I'd say you're better off just listening to them.  Maybe if I listened to the album on repeat I'd get other favourites, but I'm struggling to imagine that being the case.  None of it's terrible, but a lot of it does get perilously close to bland.

We're at #2 in the charts this week on its 31st week of an 88 week run - wow.  It really was quite the successful run, with nine weeks at #1 in three separate runs and a 39 week run in the top 10.  And it's spent another 46 weeks in the charts over another ten runs, with it last being seen in '03 - which is way more successful than I remember.  The rest of the top five were Shania Twain (an even more successful album!), George Michael, Westlife (I'm not going to manage to avoid that, am I?) and Celine Dion (thankfully a best-of, so I'll definitely avoid that) and, given that it's Christmas time, there are no new entries in the entire chart.

Wikipedia has a reasonable amount on the album, but most of it repeats itself several times - it's not as rocky as their debut album (Good Feeling, which I don't think I've ever heard) which the critics didn't like and had a go at them for trying to write commercial songs (how dare they!).  It debuted at #5 in the charts, but looked like it was doomed to slide slowly down the chart until "Why Does It Always..." received a bit more airplay and then, just as they started playing it at Glastonbury, it started raining - which the press loved.  So, by the end of the year, everyone agreed this was the best album ever - it was the third best selling album of the year and, surprisingly, is the 43rd best selling album in the UK of all time.  It never broke the US market though, getting to the lofty peak of #135.

"Customers also listened to" Doves, Snow Patrol, Starsailor and Athlete - no great surprises there, methinks.  I think this is a good not great album, very much saved by the singles - I'd be surprised if it's listened to all the way through very often these days.  But at least we didn't start the year with a Take That album (fortunately, they're halfway through their hiatus at this point).

1968 - And we're done!
19/12/99 - Fine but pointless

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