You're my dream come true, my consolation

Continuing my trip back through the 1977 album charts.

09/01/77 : Forever And Ever - Demis Roussos

Well I wasn't expecting to meet Demis on my travels - I vaguely remember him from back in the day (mostly due to Kenny Everett!) but I've no idea what I'm going to get here, although I suspect it's not exactly going to be my thang.

Well, it's certainly different - there's a lot of vibrato falsetto going on, which isn't something you hear a lot of and I've not seen bouzoukis on many other albums either!  I was surprised to actually recognise the title track and "Goodbye My Love, Goodbye".  "My Friend The Wind" is also interesting because it uses "Zorba's Dance" so it sounds very familiar, despite me never having heard it before.  It's fair to say none of this is my sort of thing, but I don't feel I can really be too rude about it because he's just doing what he wants to do and people obviously loved it.  Quite who they were and what they were thinking is unclear, but I guess I have to respect their views (despite them being patently mad).  Maybe it was the album cover that just drew them into Demismania?

We're at #18 in the chart this week on his 30th week of a 34 week run, with it having peaked at #2 for three weeks - kept off the top by a Beach Boys best-of, but amusingly joined in the top five by Nana Mouskouri, so some weird Greek thing was obviously going on in '76.  Somewhat bizarrely, this was Demis's 16th run in the charts - it first charted in June '74 and took two years to get its most successful run.  The top five this week were ABBA, an ABBA best-of, Queen and best-ofs from Slim Whitman (a new entry - what were people thinking?) and Frankie Valli and the next highest new entry was Genesis (a relatively high #10).

Wikipedia tells me this is his second album, it was released in '73 and it was MASSIVELY popular.  As well as here, it got to #2 in Spain and Austria and it got to #1 in Denmark, Finland, The Netherlands, Germany, Norway and Yugoslavia - I must admit to being somewhat surprised it did quite so well!  His Wikipedia entry notes that one of his most telling contributions to contemporary culture was being the subject of an argument in Mike Leigh's play Abigail's Party and when he died, Alison Steadman was interviewed on Radio 4 to discuss this - it must have been a quiet news day.

"Customers also listened to" Aphrodite's Child, Albert West, Julio Iglesias and Nana Mouskouri - apparently Albert West was a Dutch singer popular in the 70s.  I don't really have anything more to say on this - it's weird and mystifyingly popular, but we are where we are!

02/01/77 - A very forgettable end to the year
16/01/77 - Just too long

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