Slowly but surely, they drew their plans against us

Continuing my trip back through the 2005 album charts.

14/08/05 : Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds - Jeff Lynne

Another album I own, albeit one I'm somewhat surprised to meet in '05 - if I'd done this exercise linearly we'd have met in '78, at a very similar chart position.  I remember liking it, but very rarely listening to all of it - my memory is that it starts strongly and somewhat tails off, so it will be interesting to see what I think now.

Well, it certainly starts strongly - I think most albums would be improved by a monologue from Richard Burton and "The Eve Of The War" is most definitely a very strong track.  "Forever Autumn" also still jumps out at me - it's a fine track filled with yearning.  And whilst I think it's harsh to say the album tails off, it certainly doesn't maintain the heady heights of those first four tracks - I can see why I rarely listened to all of it, but it was nice to do so for a change.  It's funny how effortlessly good Richard Burton's acting is and how desperately hard David Essex works to make his terrible.  David's singing is fine, but it doesn't help that he's given easily the weakest song on the album - Julie Covington, Phil Lynott, Justin Heyward and Chris Thompson (from Mannfred Mann) are all much more fortunate with their material.  Overall, I think this is a classic album but not a perfect one.

We're at #6 in the charts on the fifth week of an impressive thirty week run, but even more impressively this was its thirty-first run, including previous stints of 93, 32 and 40 weeks.  This version was last seen in the charts in '19 - there's also a "new generation" version which came out in '13 featuring Liam Neeson, Gary Barlow, Ricky Wilson, Maverick Sabre and Joss Stone, which is quite the mix.  #5 is as high as it's made it in the charts but it's had an impressive 308 weeks on the chart (and another 10 weeks for the new generation version).  The top five this week were James Blunt, Coldplay, Kaiser Chiefs, Faithless and Daniel Powter (a new entry) and the next highest new entry was Lulu (#29) - obviously.

Wikipedia has the expected large amount (299 milliPeppers) and it falls into two main sections - one being a detailed plot and how it differs from the book and the other being the multitude of different ways in which Jeff has foisted TWOTW on us - four or five different English albums, albums in German and Spanish, seven tours (amusingly, the fourth one was billed as the final tour), several video games, a musical audiobook and an "immersive experience".  I think I'm fine sticking with just the album, thank you.  The critics were very nice about it, but for something that never seems to be out of the charts here, it hasn't done as well globally as you might think - #1 in Australia, #2 in The Netherlands and New Zealand and #10 in Germany but only #94 in the US.

"Customers also listened to" Mike Oldfield, Rick Wakeman, Greg Lake and a load of people who sung on the album - no major surprises there.  I like this album and was pleased to be made to listened to it all the way through - but I struggle to imagine it'll happen again for quite a few years.

07/08/05 - Well, it could have been worse, I guess
21/08/05 - Incredibly average