You're not Dylan Thomas, I'm not Patti Smith

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

26/04/24 : The Tortured Poets Department - Taylor Swift

I had a sneaking suspicion that this might be #1 this week so I took a (very minimal) risk and listened to it before the charts come out - I've been avoiding it all week but it had to be done.  I was very much expecting my usual reaction of "it's fine but I don't see why so many people worship her".

Yeah - it's fair to say this isn't her Scandi death metal album.  I didn't hate any of it, but there's very little to love here either - if I had to pick favourites I think I'd go for "But Daddy I Love Him" (not a good title), "Florida!!!" (Florence's voice works nicely with Taylor's) and maybe some of the songs towards the end which show a bit more variety but my brain had kinda switched off by then.  Absolutely no-one needs 65 minutes and 16 tracks of this and I hate to think what would have happened if I'd tried all 31 tracks (and 122 minutes) of the Anthology version.  As expected, it's all perfectly listenable but I'm no closer to understanding anything...

We are, unsurprisingly, at #1 with a new entry this week - I wonder how many countries got to say that this week?  The rest of the top five are Pearl Jam (another new entry), Beyoncé, The Weeknd (who is listening to this?!?) and a UB40 "celebration" (another new entry) and the next highest new entry is a Bruce Springsteen best-of (#15).  I'm also going to call out some weirdness at the bottom of the top ten where we have Fleetwood Mac at #8 (best-of) and #9 (Rumours) and ABBA Gold at (#10) - three albums with nearly 2,500 weeks (48 YEARS!) on the chart between them.  There's also a strange selection of re-entries which I suspect must be something to do with Record Store Day - Blur's Parklife (#16), Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon (#21), Orbital's eponymous debut (#31) and Black Sabbath's Paranoid (#79).

Last week I said that James would drop to #65 so I'm taking #74 as a moral victory and I don't feel I have any choice other than to say that Taylor is going to hang on to the #1 spot (although the initial reaction from my eldest to the album isn't all that favourable, so it might slip).  Her stats this week are actually relatively poor for her (I assume because everyone's been busy listening to this) - one in the top ten, four in the top thirty and eight in the entire chart.  Poor Tay-Tay!

Wikipedia already has 408 milliPeppers on the album and I couldn't be bothered to read any of it - I've already spent far too long with her this week.  The critics were mostly nice enough about the album, but because it's a Taylor Swift album a sideline has sprung up in reviewing the reviews, which just feels weird.  Commercially, the numbers are astonishing - in the US it sold 1.4 million copies on the first day alone, including 600,000 vinyl copies.  And it's not done too badly in other countries either because it's easiest just to list the countries where it hasn't got to #1 - #2 in Finland and Norway, #3 & #4 in Lithuania (the long version is treated separately, otherwise she'd be up there) and #5 in Japan.

"Customers also listened to" Benson Boone, Pearl Jam, Hozier and Lizzy McAlpine - I understand what Lizzy's doing on that list but apart from that, I'm lost.  As I remain about trying to understand her popularity - there's nothing really wrong with this, but I don't really see there's much to it at all.

19/04/24 - Just didn't click with me
03/05/24 - Not bad at all