The lights are on, but you're not home

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts

17/08/86 : Riptide - Robert Palmer

This is an interesting one - I knew and thought the singles were well done, but was always a bit mystified as to who was actually buying his stuff because it didn't seem to have a particular demographic. It was all not quite my kind of thing and there would never have been any chance of me listening to the album, so I'm intrigued as to what we've got here - amusingly Wikipedia describes the album as "hard rock" and I'm pretty certain we're not going to get anything I'd consider as such.

And we very much don't, but I'm not sure how I would describe it - slightly funky-pop-rock? None of it strays too far from the singles "Addicted To Love" (which is a fine track, but goes on for far too long) and "I Didn't Mean To Turn You On" (which I didn't know was a cover written by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who we met recently producing this) - I have to say it's all pretty well done and I can appreciate it and maybe even go as far as saying I liked it, but I'm still no nearer understanding who either bought it or actively listened to it.

We're at #8 in the charts this week on his fourteenth week of a 25 week run, with #5 being as high as it got in the previous week. This was actually its second run with it having managed a measly two weeks in November of the previous year - I suspect the video for "Addicted To Love" may well have been responsible for its resurgence. The top five this week were Now 7 (a new entry starting a five week run at the top), Madonna, Lionel Richie (another new entry), Queen and Chris de Burgh and the next highest new entry was Daryl Hall (#26).

Wikipedia tells us this is his EIGHTH album (his first album was released in '74 and he made it to fourteen before his untimely passing in '03, which I'd completely forgotten about) and there were some serious musicians involved including Andy Taylor (Duran Duran), Bernie Edwards and Tony Thompson (Chic), Guy Pratt (he's played on a LOT of albums) and Chaka Khan. The critics were mostly nice enough about it but our old friend Robert Christgau was not a fan ("what makes him barely listenable is his holdings in R&B") - commercially, it did well but only in a few places getting to #2 in Canada and #8 in the US, selling two million copies over there.

"Customers also listened to" The Power Station, Fine Young Cannibals, Mike & The Mechanics and Paul Young - a definitely similar vibe across that lot and I'm looking forward to bumping into FYC at some point ('89, apparently). As I said before, I didn't mind this at all but have no idea who was buying it.

10/08/86 - Surprisingly enjoyable
24/08/86 - Not as bad as they'd have you believe