I don't want to be a bus driver all my life

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts.

01/08/99 : The Party Album - Vengaboys

I try not to go into these things with too many preconceptions, but this is going to be fucking awful, isn't it?  And no, we've never owned it (8/22)

Well, well, well - that was a surprise.  I thought that some of the metaphysical imagery was really particularly effective.  Interesting rhythmic devices too, which seemed to counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor of the humanity of the poet’s compassionate soul.  

For those of you unfamiliar with Douglas Adams - I'm joking, it was shit.  I will accept that some of the choruses were catchy - but they didn't half know it and so they just made the entire song consist of the chorus repeated over and over and over.  I reckon there must be hyperactive four year olds fed exclusively on tartrazine who would reject this as too repetitive - and I suspect I'm going to be very depressed after the next two sections when I discover how successful it was.  There is also far, far too much of it - 52 minutes!

We're at #7 in the charts this week on their 19th week of a 53 week run (yes, this spent over a year in the charts), with it having peaked at #6 in its 18th week.  The top five this week were Boyzone, Ricky Martin, Shania, Abba Gold (enjoying a 22 week run in the top ten, for no obvious reason) and Whitney, with the highest new entry being Destiny's Child (#12).

Unlike me, Wikipedia works under the principle of "if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything" - it basically tells us that this album exists and people bought it.  And it was lots of people, given that it sold over a million copies in Europe (and even 500,000 in the US).

"Customers also listened to" Aqua, Right Said Fred, Culture Beat and Mr President and I can't help but feel that Aqua would be a joy to listen to in comparison.  In case you couldn't tell, I thought this was utterly, irredeemably without merit - it's just horrible.  Feel free to call me a musical snob - in this case it's a badge I'll wear with pride.

25/07/99 - Perfectly fine
08/08/99 - Better than expected

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