Tried to square not being there

Continuing my trip back through the 2015 album charts.

21/08/15 : Chaos And The Calm - James Bay


I always think I don't like James Bay because I dismiss him as one of those fey singer-songwriters with no substance (the hat really doesn't help him out) - until I hear some of his stuff and go "oh no, he's one of the ones that are OK". Well, I hope I do anyway...

Yeah - there's nothing wrong with most of this for me. I can see that you could find his voice annoying and some of the songs are a bit rambling, but I very much liked "Hold Back The River" and "Let It Go", which I already knew and "Incomplete", which I didn't. It also feels like it could quite easily be a grower as well.

We're at #2 in the chart this week on his - wait for this - 22nd week of an 87 week run, with it having peaked at #1 in its debut in his week and it's spent thirteen weeks in the top five so it's really done well for itself. The rest of the top five were Cilla Black (she died at the beginning of the month, resulting in her only week at #1 out of 111 weeks in the album charts), Bullet For My Valentine (a new entry), Ed Sheeran and Dr Dre and we have one more new entry for Neck Deep (#8), who I don't remember in the slightest (a Welsh pop-punk outfit, apparently).

Wikipedia has very little on the album other than saying it's his debut album and, somehow, it was nominated for a Grammy award. The critics were apparently mixed on the album (although no evidence is offered to back this up) but it did surprisingly well commercially, also getting to #1 in Ireland and Switzerland, making the top ten in quite a few places and #15 in the US. It was also, quite bizarrely, #89 in the Icelandic year-end chart in 2019 - they're obviously a few years behind everywhere else.

"Customers also listened to" Birdy, James Arthur, Passenger and Jamie Lawson - yeah, there's definitely similar vibes across the patch there. I didn't mind this at all though - I can't say I'll be rushing back to it, but it was all perfectly listenable for me.

14/08/15 - Surprisingly tolerable
28/08/15 - Very not good

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