Strangled by the wishes of pater - hoping for the arms of mater

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts

10/08/86 : Picture Book - Simply Red

We've met two Simply Red album so far and the results have been bad and bland - whilst it's not really my kind of thing, I do at least have slightly higher expectations for this.

Yeah, it's all perfectly well put together and pretty damn smooth - the very definition of blue-eyed soul, I'd suggest. He really did have a lovely voice and great control and there are some decent tunes on here including "Money's Too Tight To Mention" (which I actually own and isn't really like a Simply Red track at all), "Heaven" (a Talking Heads cover) and "Holding Back The Years" (which is a very fine track indeed). I think I'd actually go as far as saying as I enjoyed this - yes, it's very dinner-partyish, but you've got to listen to something during them dinner parties, don't you?

We're at #8 on the 24th week of an impressive 87 week run, with it peaking at #2 on its fourteenth week. However, this is their third run - they had an eight week run starting in October '85, then came back for a five week run starting in January before really digging their heels into the chart - I assume "Holding Back The Years" was responsible. And, unlike most albums we've seen this year, it also had legs managing another fifteen runs over the years, with it last being seen in '96 for a surprisingly successful six week run. The top five this week were Madonna, Chris de Burgh, Queen, a Wham! best-of and Robert Palmer and the highest new entry was Billy Joel, all the way down at #38.

Wikipedia tells us this was their debut album, but doesn't have a lot more on it - I knew "Money's Too Tight To Mention" was a cover version, but I couldn't have told you it was originally by The Valentine Brothers. The critics were very nice about the album indeed and it did well commercially, getting to #1 in Iceland and The Netherlands (obviously) and a very decent #16 in the US, selling 1 million copies there and 1.5 million here. Weird side fact - one of the members of the group at this time became disillusioned with the industry and went on study composition and then retrained as a masseur, ending up working for Chris Hoy and Liverpool FC.

"Customers also listened to" Sade, Sananda Maitreya (or Terence Trent D'Arby, as you probably know him), Lisa Stansfield and Seal - some pretty smooth sounds there and no mistake. And Simply Red have also produced some smooth sounds in their time and this is the best offering from them that I've heard from them so far - I really quite liked it.

03/08/86 - All very dull
17/08/86 - Well put-together