The sky doesn't know whether to rain or shine

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts

26/10/86 : Between Two Fires - Paul Young

I can't say I remember this existing - it definitely feels after his peak period, so I imagine he was desperately trying to hold on to fame. My expectations are for an ocean of blandness...

Oh yes, this is very bland - it's only 44 minutes long, but it felt at least twice that. His voice doesn't sound as smooth and strong as it used to be a mere three years earlier on No Parlez - it's surprisingly low in the mix on quite a few of the tracks. None of it is horrible, but there's no danger of me revisiting or even remembering this.

We're at #4 with a new entry this week on the start of an impressively undeserved seventeen week run and the rest of the top five were Paul Simon, Madonna, Five Star and Frankie Goes To Hollywood (another new entry for their second album, which I'm sure is dreadful but I'd have still much preferred it to this album). The next highest new entry though is Billy Idol (#9) and I'm very pleased I didn't have to endure that.

Wikipedia tells us this is his third album and notes it follows his previous formula of mixing covers with some original songs, but there are only two covers on this (and I didn't recognise either of them as such). Rolling Stone tells me that if I listen to it more than a few times, then I'll discover it's "a detailed portrait of the problems human beings have with sharing things" - I can assure you that won't be happening. It did remarkably well commercially though - #19 in Sweden, #23 in The Netherlands and even #75 in the US.

"Customers also listened to" Barbara Dickson, Robert Palmer, The Bluebells and Mal Pope - which is quite the odd combination. But Paul is an odd one all on his own - yes, he had a lovely voice on some songs but that doesn't really go any way to explaining the popularity of his albums.

19/10/86 - An enjoyable revisit
02/11/86 - A very pleasant first listen