This ain't love, it's clear to see

Continuing my trip back through the 2015 album charts.

17/07/15 : In The Lonely Hour - Sam Smith


Somewhat surprisingly, our third visit with Sam (they've only had four albums out) and previously I've been somewhat underwhelmed - they've certainly got a nice voice, but the choice of material isn't exactly inspiring. Maybe things will be different on their breakout album, but I'm expecting a pretty similar reaction.

Like the last album from Years &Years, this is an album with an obvious stand-out track ("Stay With Me", but I also particularly liked "Like I Can"), but unlike Y&Y, there's a decent amount of variety across the album - at first listen this just felt like a more impressive effort. It's interesting because I feared I'd find Y&Y's offering overwrought whereas this is considerably more so - but surprisingly enjoyable as a result. 

We're at #4 in the charts this week on their 60th week of an impressive 131 week run (of which it spent the first 67 weeks in the top ten - still a record for a debut album) having spent eight weeks at #1 - it's currently up to 458 weeks on the chart, with it last being seen in April of this year. The rest of the top five were Years & Years (a new entry), Ed Sheeran, James Bay and Taylor Swift (only her 38th week on the chart - she's up to 365 now and another 39 for her version) and the next highest new entry was Fifth Harmony (#18) best known these days for having featured Camilla Cabello in their line-up. 

Wikipedia has a load on the album (324 milliPeppers) but there's remarkably little of interest in there. Sam tells us the theme of the album is "sad" (which definitely comes across) because they were very lonely at the time - they certainly seem happier with their weird costumes now! The critics generally liked Sam's voice but were a bit "meh" about the songs, which kinda surprised me because I thought they were all generally fine and the album did win four Grammy awards, so I guess the success somewhat changed their minds. 

Commercially, you've probably already guessed that we went particularly mad for it here - it was the second best selling album of 2014 (behind Ed), the third best selling album of 2015 (behind Adele and Ed again) and has appeared in the top 100 of the year-end chart for every year since. Away from these shores, it didn't do too badly either, getting to #1 in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden and it was top three in a load of countries, including #2 in the US.

"Customers also listened to" Adele, Emeli Sande, Maroon 5 and Ed Sheeran - some reasonably successful artists in that list and we forget how big Emeli was for a bit - I'm sure we'll come across her at some point around this time. And I'd certainly forgotten how big this album was at the time - I'm quite surprised I never caught up with it until now. And whilst I'm not sure it deserved quite as much success as it got, it's certainly a decent enough listen which I enjoyed.

10/07/15 - Something a bit different
24/07/15 - Fine, but not enough variety for me

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