A bleeding heart torn apart left on an icy grave

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts.

18/04/99 : Forgiven, Not Forgotten - The Corrs

For me, this album is entirely forgotten (and never owned - 16/37), but I have a sneaky suspicion that pretty soon they won't be forgiven for it...

Awww - it's not that bad but they'll go back to being forgotten very soon, I can assure you.  The tracks bounce along nicely enough and I even remember that I'd heard "Runaway" before, but they do play up the Oirishness a bit too much with the fiddle and tin whistle making regular appearance.  The vocals are surprisingly Abba-esque at times (Shania Twain would be another touchpoint) and the drums much higher in the mix than I was expecting, but apart from that there's nothing here to startle the pigeons - they well may be starting to nod off by the end of it (it feels a lot longer than 48 minutes).

We're at #3 in the charts on their 53rd week of an 82 week run - but that's not even half the story!  This album first charted in '96 with a pretty reasonable six week run in the lower reaches of the chart - it then popped back in for seven more runs varying between one and five weeks over the next two years, but looked doomed to obscurity.  And then they released their cover of "Dreams" and things took off big time with it being in the charts for most of the next two years, peaking at #2 in its 73rd week!  In all, it's managed 140 weeks on the charts - which feels like a LOT more than it deserves.

The rest of the top five were Catatonia (a new entry), ABBA, The Corrs again and Stereophonics and there are no more new entries in the top ten, with the next highest being Eminem's debut album (#12) - this has spent 134 weeks in the chart and it's only spent one week higher than this position when it got to #10 in its 65th week on the charts.  And, amusingly, the artist at #1 in the charts that week was - The Corrs! (with yet another of their albums).  The next highest new entry this week was a James Last album of country songs (#19) - I will not be going out of my way to track that down.

Wikipedia has some interesting background to the album - the group were playing at Whelan's bar in Dublin where they were noticed by JFK's sister who invited them to play at the '94 FIFA World Cup.  They must have been totally "is this a wind-up?" - but it wasn't and they got a record deal whilst they were out there.  Apart from that, there's remarkably little on the album other than that the tour lasted two years - and looking at the chart details, it's not that surprising they were busy for a long time because this was the #3 album in Australia's '86 year-end chart and #19 in the UK's '89 year-end chart.  That's a serious amount of global longevity!  Surprisingly, it only got to #131 in the US, but it still managed to sell 2 million copies worldwide.

"Customers also listened to" Something Happens, Natalie Imbruglia, Donna Lewis and Savage Garden - I'm not aware of half of them and am perfectly happy for things to stay that way!  I didn't hate this as much as I was expecting to - it's really not my sort of thing but, if you like it then I will grudgingly accept that this is allowed.  I am very generous that way, aren't I?

11/04/99 - A welcome revisit
25/04/99 - A pretty forgettable experience