She wore a star-shaped tambourine - prettiest girl I'd ever seen

Continuing my trip back through the 2015 album charts.

08/03/15 : Chasing Yesterday - Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds


I really don't like NGHFB - a band so average that they had to put "Noel Gallagher" in their name because otherwise no-one would be in the slightest bit interested in them. So, let's just say my expectations are not high going in to this.

Sigh - it's not horrible, but it is bang average, very samey and prone to cliche. It does have a few decent riffs across the album, it is better than later Oasis stuff and I'd go as far as saying I actually liked "Lock All The Doors", but mostly it's just boring - why does anyone think they need this in their life?

We're at (of course) #1 with a new entry in the chart this week on the start of a 29 week run - seriously people, what's wrong with you? The rest of the top five were Sam, Ed (these two spend fourteen months together in the top ten), George Ezra and Royal Blood and we have three more new entries in the top ten for Kelly Clarkson (#6), The Overtones (#8) and The Shires (#10).

Wikipedia has way more than I was expecting on the album (152 milliPeppers) but it's all very boring and self-congratulatory. The critics loved it - that man can do no wrong in their eyes and I also wasn't surprised to see it won Q's Album of the Year. It did much better commercially than I expected because I foolishly assumed Europeans would be immune to his "charms" but it was top ten in most countries there and got to #1 in Ireland (only #35 in the US though, so they show more resistance than most!)

"Customers also listened to" Oasis, Liam Gallagher, Beady Eye and Richard Ashcroft - no-one expected any of that lot, eh? I'm perfectly happy to admit that none of this is horrible but it's not nearly as great as everyone (and particularly Noel) claims it is.

01/03/15 - Perfectly listenable
15/03/15 - Stop making Grandma swear, kids

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