I said hello unnoticed - you said goodbye too soon

Starting my trip back through the 1977 album charts.

25/12/77 : Foot Loose & Fancy Free - Rod Stewart

Why 1977?  Well - why not, eh?!?

Rod's a man who pops up pretty often throughout the years and I can't say I'm ever ecstatic to see him - but when you see some of the albums I've skipped over to get here, you'll understand I'm more pleased than usual to see him.

And actually, I didn't mind this at all - although it is a bit of an odd fish.  It starts off pretty up-tempo jazz/blues/rock - not great, but not terrible at all.  We then come to "You're In My Heart (The Final Acclaim)" - one of his best known tracks (although I bet hardly anyone knows it's full title) and I like it.  And from this point on, the tempo of the tracks get steadily lower as it transitions to appeal to fans of his ballads.  Except for - and you're really not going to believe this...

...his cover of The Supremes' "You Keep Me Hanging On" which is, quite obviously, a prog version.  And, even more unbelievably, it's actually surprisingly enjoyable - more in a "I can't believe he did that" kinda way than "Wow, I love this" kinda way, but it's well worth a listen.  I mean, it's not a great album but it's a lot better than I was expecting it to be - Rod was still taking the music somewhat seriously at this point and it was quite enjoyable hearing what he tried out.

We're at #8 in the chart this week on his seventh week of a 26 week run, with him having peaked at #3 in his first two weeks.  The top five this week are a top five you wouldn't see nowadays because the rules have all changed - Disco Fever (a compilation which opens with Baccara's "Yes Sir I Can Boogie" and goes rapidly downhill), best-ofs from Bread (which my wife owns!), Paul Simon and Gladys Knight (she also has one of these, but not this one) and Feelings, a random compilation album which includes two tracks from both David Soul and Barry Manilow, so that's all you need to know about that.  Looking at the top thirty, we have eighteen compilation and best-of albums in there, so it will be interesting to see how far down the chart we venture this year and there are obviously (because of Xmas) no new entries in the chart this week.

Wikipedia doesn't have a lot on the album - it's his eighth and the "second to last of his acclaimed 1970s albums".  There's no word on critical response, but it did well commercially, getting to #2 in the US (selling three million copies over there) and #1 in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and The Netherlands.  I also learnt from Wikipedia's disambiguation links that "foot loose & fancy free" is an irreversible binomial - by which they mean that you are never going to be "fancy free & foot loose".

"Customers also listened to" Faces, Bob Segar, Eagles and Eric Clapton - some fine 70s sounds there.  But I'd have to say that Rod surprised me here by making an album that has a lot to like about it and he's pushing various musical boundaries in a way that, just possibly, he's not particularly known for these days.

18/12/77 - An interesting mess
2023 - A mixed year on all fronts