Am I in too deep or should I swim to the shore?

Continuing my trip back through the 1977 album charts.

06/11/77 : Thunder In My Heart - Leo Sayer

Lol - who knows what we're going to get from this?  Leo was surprisingly cool for a bit (despite wearing the most terrible jumpers) but I can't help but feel that his time must have been coming to an end around now - the contrast with The Sex Pistols at the top of the chart couldn't be greater.

I actually didn't mind the opening title track - it's a strange combination of disco and strings (quite ABBAish), with him giving it all a rocky vocal.  It feels like something that Joel Corry or Jax Jones could give an up-to-date remix and it do surprisingly well in the chart today.  After that it's all a bit odd - he can't quite decide if he wants to be Billy Joel or Bee Gees (complete with falsetto!).  It wasn't horrible (and was quite pleasant in places) but it felt like the sort of thing that no-one really does these days - it's kinda in the same vein as Gilbert O'Sullivan or Harry Nillson.  An interesting but dated musical oddity - you also have to wonder what look he was going for on the album cover.

We're at #10 in the charts this week on his fourth week of a twelve week run with it peaking at #8 in his third week.  The top five this week were The Sex Pistols (a new entry - which was pretty rare those days), best-ofs from Bread, Cliff Richard (40 Golden Greats - of which I recognise about ten!) and Diana Ross (only 20 Golden Greats for her) and a live album from Genesis and the next highest new entry was Lynnrd Skynnrd (#17 - it also feels like their time was coming to an end).

Wikipedia tells me that this is his fifth album and that there's already been a remixed version of "Thunder In My Heart" in '06, which was (ingeniously) titled "Thunder In My Heart Again" and was credited to Meck featuring Leo Sayer (Meck being a random UK DJ) - it's not exactly a million miles away from the original and I suspect Joel Corry would do a much better job.  Back to the album, an interesting name pops up in the personnel listing - Ray Parker Jr (of "Ghostbusters" fame) played guitar on it.  There's no word on critical response, but it did better commercially than I was expecting - #8 in Australia, #11 in NZ, #14 in Norway and #19 in Sweden.

"Customers also listened to" Gilbert O'Sullivan, 10CC, Hot Chocolate and Dr. Hook - this selection feels harsh on Hot Chocolate to me.  I lump the rest of them firmly in with Leo though - there's the odd good track in their canon of work, but most of it is puzzlingly peculiar.  This was an interesting rather than terrible listen though.

30/10/77 - I liked this more than I was expecting to
13/11/77 - A well done not my kinda thang

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