They used to tell me I was building a dream

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts.

19/12/99 : Songs From The Last Century - George Michael

And we stay at 100% ownership - this one was the lovely Mrs Reed's and I seem to recall she liked it more than me.

And yeah, that's very much where we are.  It's not that I don't like this because all the songs sound good - but I suspect George could sing the phone book and it would still sound good.  But I'd struggle to say any of them sound great (maybe "Brother Can You Spare Me A Dime" and "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" are close though) and there's no obvious thematic link to bind them all together - so what's the actual point to this album?  And George did so much great original stuff - why was he wasting his time on this?  Maybe I'm being harsh (OK - I AM being harsh) but that's the feeling I'm left with.  A random musical observation to finish - the harp at the beginning of "I Remember You" is very similar to the beginning of Bjork's "Like Someone In Love".

We're at #3 in the charts this week on his second week of an 18 week run, with it having peaked at #2 in its debut week.  It managed another eights weeks across two more runs in '90, but this was certainly one of his less successful albums.  The top five this week were Shania, Travis, a Celine Dion best-of and Westlife and once again, there are no new entries in the chart this week.

Wikipedia doesn't have an awful lot on the album other than pointing out it's his only solo album not to make #1 - #2 ain't too shabby though.  It also points out that the album does really have a theme because eight of the ten tracks are jazz standards - I think it's the incongruity of "Roxanne" and "Miss Sarajevo" (a U2 track I'd completely forgotten about) that just distracted me.  It also reminds me that "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" was written by Ewan MacColl (Kirsty's dad) for Peggy Seeger (who was very much not Kirsty's mum).  There's no word on the critical response but it did OK (but not spectacularly) commercially - except in the US where it only got to #134.

"Customers also listened to" Wham!, Aretha Franklin, Paul Young and Sananda Maitreya - one of those artists is slightly less known by me than the rest of them.  I don't hate this album and it definitely showcases his fine voice, but I just can't be bothered with it when there's so much other, better (imho) George material out there.

12/12/99 - A surprisingly unannoying album
26/12/99 - A very successful album

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