You won't regret me - champagne confetti

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

10/11/23 : Golden - Jung Kook

A lucky escape this week because I thought I was going to have to listen to one of Oasis's later albums but fortunately it turned out to be a best-of, so I got this instead.  I have, of course, absolutely no idea what "this" is though - I'm assuming some kind of rappy stuff?

Ah no - he's one of BTS and here he's producing remarkably average pop.  It's quite well done remarkably average pop, but there's really nothing to make it stand out - not sure what more I can say.  Amusingly, "Seven" reminded me of Craig David because it lists the days of the week and what he'd like to be doing to a lady on each of them - but instead of, like Craig, aspiring to be "making love by Wednesday", Jung declares that "night after night, I'll be fucking you right".  But I have to say I fear that won't be happening if she listens to this album beforehand...

This week we're at #3 with a new entry in the charts which feels ridiculously high for the content but I guess there's a few BTS fans out there that will have helped it on its way.  The rest of the top five are Taylor, an Oasis best-of (a re-entry and I've no idea why!), The Rolling Stones (that's hanging in there well) and a Cliff Richard best-of (another new entry billed as "Cliff with strings" which sounds perfectly dreadful) and there's one more new entry in the top ten which is a Johnny Marr best-of (#7 - and it, of course, features precisely zero Smiths songs).

Looking further down the charts, there's a couple more new entries that jumped out at me as being worthy of comment.  Firstly, Caroline Polachek (#23) because I really liked her last album so I made an effort to check this out and quite enjoyed it (it's very reminiscent of Marina, so obviously I'd like it) - but, quite bizarrely, this was actually released in February, so I've no idea why it's suddenly charted this week.  Secondly, I was somewhat surprised to see Dire Straits (#81) make a rare appearance - and even more surprised when I saw it was an 8 CD (£60) or 12 LP (£190 - ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY POUNDS!!!) boxset. 

Last week I boldly stated that OMD would surprise a few people and hang in there to #34 - it's fair to say I was wrong because they're at #73.  I've got no idea how Mr Kook will do, so let's just go for #34 again, shall we?  And this week's Taylor stats are one in the top one, five in the top twenty and all ten in the entire chart - at some point people are going to get bored listening to her, aren't they?

Wikipedia has a few paragraphs on the album, but little of any interest.  The critics have been surprisingly nice about it (NME gave it four stars!) but it was always going to do well commercially - getting to #1 in (surprise, surprise!) Japan and South Korea.  And, somewhat less obviously, Lithuania.

"Customers also listened to" j-hope, Agust D, RM and V - do these people not have real names?!?  At least Jung Kook is actually his real name, but this is a very average album - perfectly listenable, but utterly forgettable.

03/11/23 - Well worth checking out
17/11/23 - Nothing special