Um, can you play a song with a fucking beat?

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

02/08/24 : The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess - Chappell Roan

She's finally got her chance - and I'm super pleased for her. I've noticed this slowly crawling up the chart for some time now (she debuted at #68 and this is her sixteenth week) so I checked it out a few weeks ago and hoped I'd get a chance to write about it...

...because I really quite liked it. It's totally not aimed at me but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. It's got a decent amount of variety across the album and reminded me of MUNA or Rina Sawayama on the faster tracks and Lorde or Lana on the slower ones - those are certainly decent names to be compared to. It's all massively overblown, overwrought and over-the-top (and sometimes that's just what you need) but it's also quite heartfelt - she hits some emotional highs and lows across the album and you feel for her on her journey. It also has some very catchy choruses in there - "Femininomenom", "Red Wine Supernove" and "Hot To Go!" are all  VERY sing-along-able. It's a whole lotta fun - and very well put together.

We're at #4 in the chart this week on her sixteenth week and this is the highest it's been (so far!) and the rest of the top five are Eminem, Taylor, Charli and Billie with the old man blocking the top spot from the girls for the third week in a row. The highest new entry this week is a Blur live album (#6) which has a decent range of tracks on it, but the sound is very murky and I really don't like Damon's voice these days. A much more enjoyable new entry is Sam Tompkins (#8) - it's in the Ed Sheeran/Lewis Capaldi space and feels like it could easily be a grower. And then there's Ghost (#10) who I'd never heard of and let me just tell you I'm glad I checked out their Wikipedia page because it's most entertaining - I can't say I loved their music (heavy metal prog anyone?), but it's certainly something! And the only other new entry in the chart is The Police's Synchronicity, which is a bit odd considering it's spent 48 weeks in the chart already - but this is a "special" version. Very, very special - it's 84 tracks and six hours long. Just no - half of the original version is pretty unlistenable, so I shudder to imagine what they've done here.

Last week I guessed that Soft Play would drop out of the chart entirely - and, for a change recently, I was right! Chappell is not going to drop out - she's going to be pretty much in the same place, but I'm guessing there will be a couple of new entries that will push her down to #6. And this week's Taylor stats are one in the top ten, six in the top thirty and ten in the entire chart.

Wikipedia tells us she spent five years pulling it all together, during which she was dropped by her label because they hated what she was doing. It's been well received critically - I liked Pitchfork's comment that it was "buoyed by sturdy songcraft and steely indifference to good taste". Commercially, it didn't shoot out of the blocks but, both over here and in the US, word of mouth has got round and it's climbed into the top ten - it's also (somewhat surprisingly for me) got to #1 in Ireland.

"Customers also listened to" Renee Rapp, Gracie Abrams, Charli XCX and Taylor Swift - some ladies with attitude there! And I think it's safe to say that Chappell isn't exactly lacking in attitude - but it's also obvious she's not lacking in talent either. This is a very enjoyable surprise - check it out!

26/07/24 - A bloody awful racket
09/08/24 - Not nearly as hateful as it might have been