Too many broken hearts in the world

Completing my trip back through the 1990 album charts.

07/01/90 : Ten Good Reasons - Jason Donovan

What better way to end the year than Kylie followed by Jason?  Well, actually - I can probably think of plenty without too much effort, but here we are anyway.  I wonder if it's going to sound very different from Kylie's effort? And (this may surprise you) I never bought it leaving us at 8/52 for the year - which is disappointing when you realise we were at 6/20 at one point.

Sigh - if you sped Jason's voice up, I reckon these songs would sound exactly like Kylie. I will graciously admit that it's better than his other offering from this year, but that's all I'm going to say on the matter.  What a depressing way to end the year!

We're at #5 in the chart this week on his 36th week of a 54 week run, with it having spent four weeks at #1 and its first 23 weeks in the top ten.  Sigh.  The rest of the top five were Phil Collins, Kylie Minogue, Jive Bunny (I listened to this out of interest and it was surprisingly bearable, but utterly pointless - it just sounded like an old people's home party DJ playing 30 second snippets of ancient songs) and Tina Turner.  There were no new entries in the entire chart because there never are in the first week of the year - somewhat bizarrely three albums by The Carpenters re-entered the charts but the reason why has undoubtedly been lost in the mists of time.

Wikipedia actually tells me something interesting - "Sealed With A Kiss" was originally recorded by Brian Hyland, probably best known for his US #1 "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini".  Back to Jason, it also tells us this is his debut album and it was the best selling album in the UK in '89 - he was the first Australian to simultaneously hold the #1 spots in the single and album charts.  The critics sounded a bit beaten by the whole thing - kinda "people are going to buy it no matter what I say" but I was surprised at how well it sold in some bits of Europe, particularly Germany where it got to #3!

"Customers also listened to" Kylie Minogue, Sonia, Angry Anderson and Mel & Kim - no thank you to all of them.  And I'm thankful this will be my last visit with Mr Donovan - yes, he was just giving some people what they wanted but it was not a fun thing to experience for the rest of us.

And with that, we're done with 1990 - not the best year musically but there was the odd spot of brightness amid the gloom which I shall remind myself of in the write-up of the year up which will appear soon...

1990 - Not the best year
14/01/90 - We're not finishing the year on a high


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