The bad apple spoils the whole orchard

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

19/07/24 : The Death Of Slim Shady (Coup De Grace) - Eminem

Our fifth visit with Eminem - generally he's good enough value, but maybe struggles to deliver a full album's worth. I'm looking forward to listening to this whilst not exactly expecting to love it, so it will be interesting to see how it goes

Hmmm - I'd say there's a reasonable amount of variety here, but maybe it doesn't hit some of his previous heights. I don't think he's as funny as he's been on other albums and the rapping isn't quite up to his usual quality, but conversely I also don't think he's as juvenile on this as he is on other albums. I particularly liked "Guilty Conscience 2",  which features Slim Shady arguing with Marshall Mathers as to whether he really means all he says - it's also impressive because he somehow manages to incorporate a visual gag which made me laugh. "Temporary" is also good - it's almost soppy with some nice lyrics from Skylar Grey.

We're at #1 in the chart with a new entry this week and the rest of the top five are Taylor, Griff (another new entry - I liked this and was really reminded of MUNA, but it's also not a million miles away from SZA and Taylor), Travis (and another one - it's not going to set the world alight but it’s a decent enough set of songs performed well and much more acceptable dad “rock” than anything the bloody Gallagher brothers churn out) and Billie.

I've done all the new entries this week and they're quite the mix, I can tell you! We've got Cat Burns (#9 - "Go" is good with the rest of being fine, but nothing remarkable), Cigarettes After Sex (#11 - much mellower than I was expecting it to be), Clairo (#13 - feyer than I felt it needed to be), Onerepublic (#46 - not dreadful but there’s no “Counting Stars” on here), Cassandra Jenkins (#67 - I quite liked this with it’s kinda mellow St Vincent sound), Rema (#90 - Nigerian rap is never going to be my thing, but I actually enjoyed the bits I listened to a LOT more than I was expecting) and last, and quite possibly least, Marc Almond (#92 - he still wants to be Scott Walker, but it’s all sounds very straightforward and unnecessary).

Last week I said randomly guessed that Kasabian would drop to #34 and I wasn't too close but I also wasn't too far away with them being at #46. Eminem's gonna do better than that - let's go for #8, shall we? And Taylor's stats for the week are one in the top ten, six in the top twenty and ten in the entire chart - I expect that to slowly drop off over the next couple of weeks until she brings her tour back to London and we go all over again!

Wikipedia has less than I was expecting (138 milliPeppers) and it tells us this is his twelfth album and, unsurprisingly, Dr Dre is involved - along with a million other people. The critics were apparently quite mixed on it, even if most of the quotes given are pretty nice about it. And unsurprisingly, it's done well commercially - top three in most places (including #1 in the US, of course) but only #16 in Spain.

"Customers also listened to" LL Cool J, Hardy, G-Eazy and Crr - I've heard of LL but apart from that I'm drawing a blank there. Eminem is probably the rapper I've both most heard and most liked over the years - I didn't mind this (and found it was generally less offensive than he usually manages) but it's somewhat lacking in highlights.

12/07/24 - Somewhat underwhelming
26/07/24 - A bloody awful racket