Leave your keys if you're not coming home

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

11/08/23 : Victory - Cian Ducrot 

Due to a combination of timezone confusion, birthday celebrations and flying half way round the world, I was late coming to the charts this week.  And when I got there, I reacted with a massive "huh?" (and not only because of this album - more on this later).  I suppose I must have heard some of Cian's stuff but I can't say I'm aware of it at this point - I'm guessing it'll be Niall Horan-like, but that's going purely on his first name (which isn't always the best indicator of musical genre).  And his last name just makes me think "he surely doesn't pronounce it Duck-rot, does he?".

Well, the "first name musical genre" theory isn't actually a million miles off - Tom Grennan or Lewis Capaldi are probably a bit closer, but you get the general idea and Cian certainly doesn't hide his Oirishness (although I didn't need the tin whistle on "Endless Nights").  It's not that bad at all - I was actually previously aware of "I'll Be Waiting" which is quite a nice song indeed.  I suspect I'd also heard "All For You" which was the first single from the album and it's also not bad (and very Capaldi-esque).  I can't say I'll be rushing back to this album but I'm not going to actively avoid it either - it feels like something that either my lovely wife or mother-in-law would quite like.

We're at #1 with a new entry on a very busy week for new entries, some of which are so intriguing I had to check them out - which is another reason we're running late this week.  The rest of the top five are Skindred (a new entry by a band who Wikipedia tell me "fuses heavy metal with other genres, most notably reggae" and I can tell you this album is certainly quite something), Travis Scott, The Sherlocks (another new entry which is very much up my street - think early Arctic Monkeys) and Miles Kane (another new entry with an Arctic Monkeys feel, which isn't such a surprise from one of The Last Shadow Puppets along with Alex Turner).  And we have one more new entry in the top ten with N-Dubz at #6 and I have to admit it's not nearly as terrible as I was expecting.  Last week I said Travis would drop to #7 so once again I underestimated an album's staying power - but I really struggle to see Cian doing much better than #25.  And this week's Taylor stats are two in the top ten, six in the top twenty and nine in the entire chart - she's showing no signs of going away, is she?

Wikipedia doesn't have an awful lot on the album - the critics mostly liked it and it's done better than I'd expect across Europe with it doing best in Ireland (#1, unsurprisingly) and The Netherlands (#3).  His entry is more interesting - he got a scholarship to study flute at the Royal Academy of Music but gave it all up to become a pop star which seems to be working out OK for him.  It also tells us that the race for #1 was very close - Cian (allegedly) sold exactly the same number of CDs as Skindred (10,299) and the gap was 149 units which made it the closest race for the top for three years.

"Customers also listened to" Dean Lewis, Lewis Capaldi, Mimi Webb and Lauren Spencer-Smith - well I certainly agree with one of them and if you like a bit of Lewis then you might well like this.

04/08/23 - Surprisingly enjoyable
18/08/23 - Fun, but not enough to convert me