You sing a sad song just to turn it around

Continuing my trip back through the 2005 album charts.

21/08/05 : Daniel Powter - Daniel Powter

A name I vaguely remember, but I'm not sure I've got much more than that - I'm assuming he's a somewhat unnecessary singer-songwriter, but I might be thinking about by Daniel Bedingfield here.  Let's find out, shall we?

Oh yes - he's very unnecessary indeed.  He sings with a weird rock falsetto-ish voice on some very average tracks - Savage Garden are certainly a close touchpoint here.  I was surprised I actually knew one of his songs - "Bad Day" was everywhere for a bit and I remembered it being pretty catchy, but wasn't massively surprised to hear it was only really a good chorus.  None of it is dreadful, but I do think most of it would be improved if someone else was singing it - so somehow I don't think I'll be rushing back to it.

This week we're #5 on his second week of a massively generous 23 week run (the Rolling Stones album is far better and that managed five weeks!) with this being as high as it got.  The rest of the top five were James Blunt, Coldplay, Kaiser Chiefs and a Faithless best-of (which is probably quite good) and the highest new entry was Supergrass (#9) with the wittily titled Road To Rouen.

Wikipedia doesn't have loads on the album, other than the surprising news that it did very well in Japan with it peaking at #4, making it the best selling Western album there in 2006.  The critics were somewhat mixed about the album, with one of them snarkily (but accurately) noting that he was "lacking the star personality of a Robbie Williams or the wit of a Ben Folds".  It did pretty well commercially though, getting to the top twenty in quite a few European countries and #9 in the US - but he really stormed Japan!

"Customers also listened to" Vanessa Carlton, James Blunt, KT Tunstall and James Morrison - all of whom I'd listen to above Daniel.  I just found this very, very average.

14/08/05 - Undoubtedly a classic
28/08/05 - Enjoyably different