And give me one good reason why I should never make a change

Continuing my trip back through the 2015 album charts.

01/03/15 : Wanted On Voyage - George Ezra


I don't mind a bit of George and I know I know at least one track on here, but can't remember what it is just at the minute.

Ah yes, it's "Budapest", which I heard him play live about this time and was just amazed at how deep his voice was. The rest of the album is in a pretty similar vein and all perfectly listenable.  It's all a bit more rough and ready with a "recorded in my bedroom for YouTube" feel than his later stuff - I'm not saying this a good or a bad thing, it's just a thing. There is more variety across the album than I was expecting though - I didn't mind it at all.

This week we're at #4 on his 35th week of an impressive 95 week run, which included four weeks at #1 - it also had an 85 week run in '18/'19 for which I assume "Shotgun" was responsible. The rest of the top five were Sam, Ed, Royal Blood and Taylor and we have one new entry in the top ten for Chris Brown and Tyga (#7) which I'm quite fine without suffering. We also have a somewhat surprising re-entry for Led Zeppelin (#6) with an album from '75 - I assume some remastering was responsible.

Wikipedia tells us this is his debut album and he came to the attention of the record label after,  you guessed it, uploading videos to YouTube. It also tells us that the album title came from a sticker on Paddington Bear's suitcase, who was a George's hero when he was younger - if that's not the wholesomest story you hear today, I don't know what is. The critics were pretty nice about it, suggesting it's charming but has enough of an edge to stop it being too much. Commercially, it did very well for a debut album with it making the top ten across much of Europe, #19 in the US, #3 in the UK year-end chart for '14 and #10 for '15 (it also made the top 100 in '18 and '19 as well).

"Customers also listened to" Tom Grennan, James Bay, Paolo Nutini and Ella Henderson - I'm not sure I really see the Ella connection, but apart from that we're pretty much in the same space. I like George because he has his head screwed on and he takes his music seriously but not too seriously - and this album is perfectly listenable and a bit of fun. 

22/02/15 - A peculiar album
08/03/15 - Bang average

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