What you gonna do when things go wrong?

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts

25/05/86 : Once Upon A Time - Simple Minds

I've certainly heard this, but not as often as you'd expect for an album I really quite liked - I think I'd decided there was only room for either U2 or Simple Minds in my headspace and I plumped for the Irish option rather than the Scottish one. I'm looking forward to relistening to this though - and I'm also told it's one "we" owned, bringing us up to five for the year.

Yup, there's absolutely nothing wrong with any of this - it's a decent collection of tracks indeed. "Alive And Kicking" and "Sanctify Yourself" are the ones I remember best from back in the day but it's one of those albums where the singles aren't head and shoulders above the rest of the tracks - the whole album balances the use of vocals (including some fine female backing), guitar, keyboards, bass and drums well and doesn't outstay its welcome. I didn't listen to the 47 track, 4.5 hour super-deluxe version though - I suspect that might have been a bit too much.

We're all the way down at #16 in the charts this week on their 31st week of an impressive 78 week run with it having debuted at #1. The top five this week were Peter Gabriel (a new entry), a Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music best-of, Billy Ocean, a best-of from The Cure (another new entry) and  Simply Red, with the next highest new entry being The Ramones (#38).

Wikipedia tells us this is their seventh album - their first was released in '79 and they're up to twenty now. Jimmy Iovine and Bob Clearmountain were brought in for this one to beef up their sound but it doesn't include "Don't You (Forget About Me)" because the band really weren't all that keen on it. They turned it down initially, as did Bryan Ferry and Billy Idol - Simple Minds only agreed to do it because Chrissie Hynde told her husband not to be so mad (and it got to #1 in the US, so she knew what she was talking about). The critics were nice enough about the album and it did well commercially, making the top twenty in most of Europe and #10 in the US - it also got to #1 in The Netherlands but somewhat bizarrely it bombed in Belgium only getting to #113 and #199 (Belgium obviously have separate charts for Flanders and Wallonia).

"Customers also listened to" Big Country, Talk Talk, Tears For Fears and The Psychedelic Furs - some fine 80s names there. And Simple Minds definitely had their prime time in the 80s - this was the middle of a run of three #1 albums for them and I really quite liked it, so 1986's fine run continues.

18/05/86 - Something different from the norm
01/06/86 - A game of two halves