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Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

25/10/24 - Tension II - Kylie Minogue

I've got a lot of time for Kylie - her and I go way back to when I used to watch Neighbours twice a day at university (and I'm not sure either of us expected us to be still together 35 years later). I'm not convinced by the whole "Tension II" thing though - it feels like they were slightly surprised by the success of Tension and just wanted some more of that, thank you very much.

Well - there's more here to talk about than I was expecting and no mistake. Especially since, as I expected, this is pretty much a repeat of Tension because it's a decent set of disco tunes - but...

...for a lot of the time, it just doesn’t sound like Kylie. It's not like it sounds like Johnny Cash, but it just doesn't sound like Kylie - and surely the point to a Kylie album is that it should sound like her? Having said that, "Kiss Bang Bang" is pretty much the same song as "Padam Padam", so it's not like we're a million miles away from where we were expecting to be. But, having said that, "Midnight Rise" made a nice change with a male vocal lead from Orville Peck which wasn't at all what I was expecting. Also unexpected was the fact that three tracks weren’t available on Amazon - I've absolutely no idea what was going on there!

We are, somewhat unsurprisingly, at #1 with a new entry in the chart this week - it's her TENTH #1 album with the first one being in '88 (and she's had two #2 albums as well). The rest of the top five are Sabrina Carpenter, Rag'n'Bone Man (another new entry), Charli XCX and Ed Sheeran and, like last week, we're going to start with re-entries because there are some interesting ones out there, but (in a lot of cases) they're for an unfortunately obvious reason

One Direction (#13, #21, #22, #25, #38), Liam Payne (#62), Harry Styles (#92)
My slight suspicion is these are all to do with Liam - once again a reality TV show results in an untimely death and everyone declares that this must never happen again. There's obviously a massive discussion to be had here, but ratings are the winner every time, it appears.

Bronski Beat (#49)
It's the 40th anniversary of The Age Of Consent and I can't say I was aware how important this album was at the time, but even I knew it was speaking to people. I know there was a concert to celebrate the anniversary, but I imagine it's re-entry is related to a re-release.

The Beatles (#67)
I assume there's a reason A Hard Day's Night is back in the charts, but I can assure you I can't be bothered investigating!

Suede (#89)
And I have absolutely no idea why Dog Man Star would be back, but it's an album I love so who cares?

Looking at the new entries, we actually don't have so many this week

Rag'N'Bone Man (#3)
This is decent enough with more variety than I was expecting and he's got a lovely voice, but there's nothing here that I really care about. I guess if you like the man, you'll like this though.

Confidence Man (#9)
I was certain this was going to be a rubbish rapper but it's anything but - it's an Aussie group who churn out 00s-ish dance anthems and I have to admit I really quite liked it. I'm not sure how much of that was that it wasn't a rubbish rapper but I found it remarkably enjoyable.

Oasis (#43)
A new best-of. Really? No, I mean, REALLY?!? 

Yeat (#52)
This is a random rapper over random bleeps which is totally not usually my thing. But I really quite liked this - it was nicely different and quirky in a way that I can't really describe. I was reminded of Kanye before Kanye became, well, Kanye - there are some very decent bleeps on this and I reckon it's worth checking out if you like such things. Which wasn't at all what I was expecting.

Last week I said that Paul Heaton would drop to #56 and unfortunately I got that completely wrong because he's disappeared completely. I can't imagine Kylie suffering such a fate but it's hard to guess what might happen - I'm going for #13, but feel that might be overly optimistic for her. And this week's Taylor stats are NONE in the top ten, two in the top thirty and seven in the entire chart.

Wikipedia has a massive amount for a new album (330 milliPeppers) and I can't claim to have read it all, but Ms Minogue does make the believable point that she didn't plan on making Tension II, but the success of "Padam Padam" meant that she had a load more tracks like that submitted to her from writers which kinda pushed her in that direction. The critics were mostly pretty nice about it and it's done well commercially, making the top ten across Europe and, of course, getting to #1 in Australia.

"Customers also listened to" - errr, "no similar recommendations". Something odd is going on with this album on Amazon and no mistake - it doesn't appear it's overly affected its popularity though. I didn't mind this but I just found it a bit confusing - I didn't feel like I got any Kylie vibes off it so it could have been anyone really.

18/10/24 - Yeah, I liked this