You're a broken heart at the scene of the crime

Continuing my trip back through the 1990 album charts.

16/09/90 : Sleeping With The Past - Elton John

Never listened to (or owned - 5/16) this one, but I believe it's supposed to be OK - I obviously know "Sacrifice" and "Healing Hands", so it will be interesting to hear the rest of it.

Yeah, it's OK - there are some decent tunes on here.  Some of the effects sound pretty dated - hey, that's the '90s for you!  Of the ones I wasn't aware of, I particularly liked the title track and thought it was pretty much a classic Elton number - the rest of them are fine, but didn't really blow me away.  I don't really have anything more to say about it - if you like Elton's stuff then I can't see any reason why you wouldn't like this, but I think there's a reason that you only see "Sacrifice" on the greatest hits albums.

We're at #5 in the chart this week on his fifteenth week of a 32 week run, with it having spent five weeks at #1, which feels pretty par for the course for Elton - except that he wasn't really on a great run at the time.  Ice On Fire got to #3 in '85 but the two albums after that were top twenty at best.  This got to #6 in its release week in '89 but that looked like it would be it - it slid down the charts pretty quickly and dropped out after nine weeks and the singles released (including "Sacrifice" and "Healing Hands") didn't do anything, so it looked like that would be it.  But then Steve Wright started playing "Sacrifice" and people got interested, so the record company put those two tracks out as a double A side and it just went from there, becoming his first UK solo #1.  Eleven of his next twelve albums have made the top ten and it's fair to say his farewell tour was reasonably successful - things could have been very different otherwise.

Woah, that was a long section on its chart performance, wasn't it?  The rest of the top five were The Three Tenors, George Michael, Deacon Blue (a new entry) and Betty Boo (ditto) and the next highest new entry was Queensryche (#13)

Wikipedia tells me that Elton and Bernie were inspired by the 60s and 70s R&B artists they loved back then.  The critics were lukewarm at the time, but the public took to it big time at the second attempt - Wikipedia tells me somewhat surprisingly that this is his best selling studio album in the UK.

"Customers also listened to" George Michael, Dionne Warwick, Rod Stewart and Phil Collins - a few years in the business between them there!  According to Wikipedia, Rod has more years in the business than Elton - but Elton wins the long service award for me (although he's only my second favourite septuagenerian I've seen live this year, after Pete).  This was an interesting album to catch up with, particularly in the light of the news that it's his best selling one over here and it was all perfectly pleasant but, if I'm being honest, nothing amazing.

09/09/90 - Nicely of its time
23/09/90 - Surprisingly nostalgic