I'm so moving on
Continuing my trip back through the 2005 album charts.
04/12/05 : Breakaway - Kelly Clarkson
As far as I'm aware, Kelly was massive in the US (she was the first winner of American Idol) and that just kinda kept her busy so she never really put any effort into conquering over here, but the fact that I'm listening to this suggests she did well enough anyway. The only track of hers I'm aware of is "Since U Been Gone" which I really like, so my expectations are surprisingly high for this.
"Since U Been Gone" is still a great track but actually I also knew "Because Of You" - it's not bad at all, but maybe a bit too overwrought. The album's actually got a pretty high quality bar - the songs definitely stick to a formula, but it's an effective formula and they're all well done, with I thought "Behind These Hazel Eyes" and "You Found Me" both being particularly good. Interestingly, the production often makes her voice sound not particularly strong and I very much doubt that is the case - I don't think you could win American Idol without a belter of a voice. But overall, I really liked this - it won't appeal to everyone but if you like a bit of girl-based pop-rock then there's plenty that's far worse than this.
We're at #9 in the charts on her 20th week of an impressive 65 week run, with it peaking at #3 in her 24th week - so it seems like she did OK over here, doesn't it? This weeks top five were the Eminem best-of (a new entry), Robbie Williams, Madonna, the Take That best-of and Westlife (no big names there then!) and the next highest new entry was G4 (#6 - another one I rejected as unworthy of consideration) who I was surprised to learn came second in the first series of The X Factor.
Wikipedia has a HUGE amount on the album (410 milliPeppers) - most of it's about how she was trying to break away from her "American Idol winner" straitjacket which involved her changing pretty much everything from what she did on her first album (mostly under Clive Davis's instructions). There were a lot of different songwriters involved on the album (I counted fourteen, including Max Martin, Avril Lavigne, Matthew Wilder and a couple of guys from Evanescence) but I think they've done a pretty good job in making it sound consistent.
The critics were generally very nice about it, although there's a slight whiff of "it's very good for her" about it but it did very well commercially - particularly in the US, unsurprisingly. It started slightly sluggishly, "only" debuting at #3 but it stayed in the top twenty for 61 weeks, selling over six million copies. It got to the top five in a load of countries, making #1 in Ireland and The Netherlands and selling over ten million copies globally - its performance retrospectively validated American Idol as a success much more than her debut album did. I also noted that she played twelve arena shows in the UK to support the album, so she obviously spent more time trying to conquer over here than I remembered!
"Customers also listened to" P!nk, Avril Lavigne, Christina Aguilera and Carrie Underwood - I don't know Carrie but the others are very much in that ballpark. And I certainly can't claim to be an expert on Kelly having listened to a whole one of her albums, but it feels like I started with one of her better ones and I very much enjoyed it - it's one for blasting out in the summer with the roof down. Another win for the ladies (who've had 75% of the albums so far this year!).
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