Hey boy, sittin' in your tree

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts.

10/01/99 : B*Witched - B*Witched

I can't claim I was ever a huge B*Witched fan but I do know that a lot of people have very fond memories of them - I'm expecting a load of bearable Oirish Cheddar.  And whilst it's the sort of thing I can imagine the lovely Mrs Reed having succumbed to, I believe she resisted their charms so we never owned it (21/51).

Well, "C'est La Vie" and "Rollercoaster" are a load of fun nonsense, aren't they?  And, to be honest, the rest of them are similar, if slightly less fun - there's very little that stands out and their voices aren't exactly the strongest, but who really cares about that?  They looked like they were having fun and they wanted other people to have fun as well - there are worse things people can try to achieve with their lives!

We're at #13 in the charts this week on their pleasing thirteenth week of a 37 week run - the top five this week are Robbie Williams, George Michael, The Corrs, Steps and Boyzone and there are no new entries in the charts this week with the first weeks of January always being a bit of wasteland for new releases.

Wikipedia has more than I expected on the album, but most of it is just telling us how the singles did - all four got to #1 in the UK and I don't remember "To You I Belong" at all.  And I'm not talking about remembering it from 1999, I'm talking about from listening to it on the album about 30 minutes ago!  The critics were mostly nice enough about it with a lot of "they're junior Spice Girls" comments - but it's fair to say Robert Christgau was NOT a fan ("less bottom than Audrey Hepburn" - whatever that means).  Commercially, it did better than expected away from these shores - obviously it did well in Ireland (#2) but it also fared well in Australia (#5) and the US (#12, which seems surprisingly high).

"Customers also listened to" S Club, Five, Chesney Hawkes and Atomic Kitten - which is a slightly odd mix.  I'm never going to be B*Witched by them, but they'll be absolutely fine with that - I admire their fun attitude and let's just leave it at that.

03/01/99 - Another dreadful effort
17/01/99 - Goes some way to explaining their popularity

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