If you're not the one for me why do I hate the idea of being free?
Starting my trip back through the 2015 album charts.
25/12/15 : 25 - Adele
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Our third visit with Adele and her numerically titled albums and we're starting the year with an album we own. I've heard it quite a few times because it found its way into the car at some point, but not for a few years - I seem to recall it's all fine but no 21.
Yeah, there's no doubt she's got a very fine voice indeed and writes some nice songs - but it does suffer in comparison with what came before. I like "Water Under The Bridge" and "River Lea" - I'm not such a fan of "Hello", but I can see why people like it. If you're going to like this album then you've undoubtedly already heard it and probably own it - it will be interesting to look at the commercial numbers when we get there.
We're at #1 in the chart this week on her fifth week of a 95 week run with it spending its first seven weeks at #1, along with another six weeks throughout the run. It's spent a few more weeks in the charts over the years as well - 335 in all, with it last being seen in March this year. The rest of the top five are Elvis Presley (is there no escape?), Justin Bieber, Coldplay and Jess Glynne and there are no new entries in the top ten with the highest being Chris Brown (#23).
Wikipedia has a HUGE amount on the amount (627 milliPeppers!) - I guess that's to be expected. A surprising amount of it tells us that she had a lot of difficulty getting started on it and listing all the stuff that didn't make the album - there's actually a surprisingly small section on the songs that did make it. Apparently loads of artists moved their album release dates to avoid clashing with this - examples given are Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Kanye, One Direction and, errr, Fleur East. Interestingly, it wasn't available on streaming services until June 2016 - it's hard to imagine anyone trying that these days.
It worked for Adele though - the sales were PHENOMENAL! In the UK, it sold 800k copies in the first week, was the fastest ever to get to both one and two million sales, was the best-selling album of both '15 and '16 and got to 3.5 million sales which makes it the tenth biggest-selling studio album in the UK. It did OK in the US as well with nearly ten million sales over there and it's had legs as well - appearing in the UK year-end lists in every year since (#63 last year). The critics were generally pretty nice about it although I can go with The Guardian saying she was "a friend who you've helped countless times but who won't listen, who actually enjoys being in a mess". It also did OK at the award ceremonies - she won five BRIT awards and six Grammys, becoming the first artist to win the Album Of The Year Grammy for consecutive albums since Stevie Wonder in the 70s.
"Customers also listened to" Sam Smith, Shawn Mendes, Lewis Capaldi and Maroon 5 - not exactly the mix I was expecting (although I can totally see that Lewis is very much flying the Adele flag now it's pointed to me). I feel I'm maybe a bit unnecessarily down on this album because it is a good album - it's just that it's no 21.
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