I defy the science, I'm a missing link

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

26/01/24 : Saviors - Green Day

Our fourth visit with the lads - Dookie and American Idiot are both very fine albums, the other one not so much.  So let's we have more of the former than the latter, shall we?

Fortunately, I'd say American Idiot is probably the closest touchpoint here but there are hints of Dookie here as well - I actually quite liked it on first listen and suspect it would be a grower given half a chance.  If you like classic era Green Day, then I suspect you should check this out - with 15 songs in 45 minutes, none of them can be accused of outstaying their welcome and the quality level stays impressively high throughout the album. 

We're at - go on, guess?  Yup - #1 with a new entry with the rest of the top five being Noah Kahan (he's been climbing slowly since the beginning of December but he'll need a week of poor new entries to go any further), The Weeknd best-of (this hasn't been out of the top 20 since December '21 but it's never made the top spot despite six weeks at #2, fifteen weeks at #3 and FORTY SIX weeks in the top five!), Taylor and 21 Savage.

Last week I said that D-Block Europe would drop to #13 and no-one is as surprised as me to see them at #12 (so close!) - it's interesting that 21 Savage, last week's #2, has more staying power but having heard D-Block's effort, 21 Savage's has to be a far better album.  I think Green Day would generally drop to somewhere in the twenties, but I actually think this has quite the repeat listen factor so I'm going for #18.  And this week's Taylor stats are one in the top ten, five in the top twenty and nine in the entire chart - which seems to have been the case for ages now.

Wikipedia has loads on the album, but most of it very pointless low level information.  Interestingly, the producer of their last album was not invited back after having been criticised for the job he did and so Rob Cavallo who worked on Dookie and American Idiot got the job here.  It also tells me the album cover photo is a 1978 shot from a riot during the Troubles in Northern Ireland but "Ivan's face has been altered to show a more smiling look" (which seems a bit creepy).  The critics liked the album with NME saying it was "a band saying 'we're still here and we're still fucked'" and it's done well commercially globally.

"Customers also listened to" Neck Deep (a new entry this week at #11), The Longshot, blink-182 and Foxboro Hot Tubs (a great name from a Green Day side project).  I liked this album from the start, my view of it only improved as it went on and I might even revisit it - it'd be great in the car in the summer with the windows down.

19/01/24 - A terrible album
02/02/24 - Fine-if-you-like-that-sort-of-thing

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