What will be left is the benefit of all we've learnt before

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts.

07/11/99 : Love And The Russian Winter - Simply Red

I actually really liked Simply Red's debut single "Money's To Tight (To Mention)" but, after that, me and Mick pretty much parted ways - which brought him international success and me, well not so much.  I'm not expecting to like this, but I probably won't hate it either - and we definitely never owned it, taking us to 3/8.

Hmmm - a tricky one. There's just nothing to the songs - they all make pleasant enough noises and Mick gives us some oohs, some aahs and some nonsense lyrics, and then we move on to the next one.  It's an album for people who M People a bit too exciting - it's hard to hate, but I was definitely getting there by the end of it.  If I gave it a couple more listens, I reckon I could positively detest this - and it almost feels worth making the effort to do so.  And yes, that is Mick Hucknall on the cover but I had to check because I didn't remember him ever looking like that.

We're at #6 with a new entry on its way to an 18 week run - which is a lot in the context of today's charts but is (along with George Michael) far less than everything else we've seen this year.  The top five this week was Steps, Westlife (a new entry), Shania, Macy and Travis, which is a pretty heavy hitting selection given that Steps actually has the fewest weeks in the chart at a mere 66.  And there are three more new entries in the top ten with the interesting mix of Mariah Carey (#8), Tina Turner (#9) and Foo Fighters (#10).

Wikipedia doesn't have a lot on the album, but it does tell me that it's a bit of a departure from their previous album because it features "a more computer-generated sound" - I've absolutely no idea what that means.  It also tells us that the album was only released under pressure to fulfil their record contract - I just hope everyone was happy with what they made them do.  It went down well in Germany though, getting to #2.

"Customers also listened to" Sly & Robbie, Paul Young, Lisa Stansfield and Rick Astley - yup, they're all in the same ballpark but I'd rather listen to any of them (even S&R) rather than listen to this album again.  I'm sure we'll come across more Simply Red on our travels and I'm hoping for much better than this.

31/10/99 - Interesting, if variable
14/11/99 - Overwhelmingly average

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