We could be the greatest team that the world has ever seen

Continuing my trip back through the 2015 album charts.

20/11/15 : Made In The A.M. - One Direction

We went through a massive 1D phase in this house (and certain tracks still get played now - heaven help us if they ever reform!) so this is the second album of the year "we" own. I'm sure I must have heard it, but I can't say I remember it - I'm expecting it to be well done, if not exactly my cup of tea.

And yes, it is well done - maybe even too well done. It's all very polished and, as a result,  somewhat lacking a sense of fun. I didn't mind any of it, but I'm not sure it really had anything to make it stand out from the pack - it feels a bit like they were all trying out their solo careers, although I don't think any of them really went off down this particular path. I did recognise "Drag Me Down", "End Of The Day" and (obviously!) "History" and it was nice to hear them again from a nostalgic point of view but apart from that, I was absolutely fine without this album in my life (and will continue to be so).

We're at #1 with a new entry on the start of a 30 week run, and it's been back a few more times with it last being seen in November '20. The rest of the top five were Bieber (another new entry), Elvis, ELO (another new entry that I really wasn't expecting) and Little Mix and we have two more new entries in the top for Andre Rieu (#8 - he's charted every year since 2010) and Ben Haenow (#10 - an X Factor winner who hasn't exactly done loads since).

Wikipedia has a sizeable (258 milliPeppers) entry for the album - it's their fifth, "most recent" (just don't call it their last) album and the only one they did (so far) without Zayn Malik. The critics were generally nice about it, with Billboard declaring it "could be the band's Abbey Road" whereas Rolling Stone said it was "1D's Let It Be" - both of these statements may possibly be slightly wide of the mark. But Drowned in Sound got it right for me as they "praised "Olivia", stating that it is the only song on the album "that sounds even vaguely like anyone is having any fun" while ending the review with "it's not that this album is particularly bad, it's that I don't understand why it isn't better"". Commercially, no-one cared what anyone thought and bought it by the bucketload - it got to #1 in eleven countries and #2 in another nine (that Wikipedia could be bothered listing, anyway).

"Customers also listened to" Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Harry Styles, Liam Payne and ZAYN - nobody expected that now, did they? I didn't mind this, but I was surprised at the lack of feels it gave me - they were a big part of our lives for a bit and this just brought none of it back.

13/11/15 - Doesn't quite hit the spot
27/11/15 - Surprisingly substantial

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