I've never seen you looking so lovely as you did tonight

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts

24/08/86 : Into The Light - Chris de Burgh

This is the one with THAT song on, which attracted him a load of scorn but also a tremendous amount of money, so I suspect he coped OK with the knockers - personally, it's not my thing but I have to admit it pushes the buttons it's designed to push. I think I heard the rest of the album at some point in the dim and distant past and it's mostly not really like TLIR, but perfectly serviceable pop/rock - I've just learned, to my amazement, that "we" own it, taking us up to am impressive total of two albums so far this year.

Yeah, perfectly serviceable pop/rock is pretty much where we are - there's nothing really wrong with any of it, although some of it is a bit bland and I can't say I love the warbly falsetto delivery he uses from time to time. I actually thought that if Big Country/Simple Minds (and probably many other bands) had done some of the songs in their particular style then I'd have viewed them much more kindly. I also particularly liked "For Rosanna" - again, it's designed to push buttons but it does so nicely for me!

We're at #5 in the chart this week on his thirteenth week of a 51 week run, with #2 being as high as it got in its ten and eleventh weeks - I wonder what might have caused that? The rest of the top five are Now 7, Lionel Richie, Madonna and Queen and the highest new entry is Five Star (#6).

Wikipedia doesn't have loads on the album other than telling us it's his eighth, pointing out several times that it features "The Lady In Red" and that "For Rosanna" was written for his daughter (can you guess what her name is?), who was two at the time but went on to become Miss World. I don't recognise many of the musicians but they seem to have some pretty serious credentials - the couple I do recognise are Pino Palladino and Carol Kenyon, both of whom have very impressive Wikipedia entries - he played on No Parlez in '83 and Cowboy Carter this year (and a few in-between) and she is best known for her work on Heaven 17's "Temptation". The critics were nice enough about it noting that most of it wasn't like TLIR but that's probably still why most people bought it - and it did pretty well as a result, getting to #2 in Germany and Switzerland, #1 in Ireland and Norway and #25 in the US.

"Customers also listened to" Chris Rea, Mr Mister, Cliff Richard and The Bangles - and if "Eternal Flame" isn't the reason The Bangles are there I'll be amazed. I wouldn't go as far as actually recommending this album, but I will say it's probably not what you expect and there's a decent enough set of tracks on there.

17/08/86 - Well put-together
31/08/86 - A few fine singles