How did you get that? Do you really want to know, she said

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts

12/01/86 : Promise - Sade

Well, this is another nice surprise - I owned and loved this (seven for the year) but, whilst I catch up with the odd track of hers from time to time, I've not listened to it in a long time, so I'm very much looking to it.

And, straight from the sublime opening to "Is It A Crime?", I'm straight back in it. I liked most of the tracks - I think "Jezebel" is probably my favourite because it's a gorgeous lyric over a very stripped-back accompaniment which just slides right past you, but "Never As Good As The First Time" and "Tar Baby" also deserve a mention. I was very confused by the instrumental track "Punch Drunk" because I didn't remember it at all, but Wikipedia explained it didn't appear on the LP version (and I really wasn't missing much). 

We're at #10 in the chart this week on their tenth week of a decent 27 week run, having spent the first two weeks at #1 - a shorter overall run than Diamond Life, but this is their only #1 album. The top five this week were Dire Straits (starting a run of ten weeks at #1), A-ha (starting a run of five weeks at #2 - they were unlucky to come up against Brothers In Arms), Now! 6, Barbra Streisand (a new entry - why on earth didn't she get this out in time for Christmas?) and Madonna, with the next highest new entry being the inspiringly named Inspirational Choir (#61).

Wikipedia has a reasonable amount on the album - a lot of it basically says they did things exactly the same way as they did them for Diamond Life. The critics were surprisingly bitchy about it at the time - Spin said "Sade is a torch singer without the torch. Her voice has no blood, no guts, and no soul". Ouch - but, retrospectively, people have been nicer about it though. Commercially it did very well, getting to #1 in The Netherlands, Finland, Italy, Switzerland and the US and selling nearly ten million copies globally - which is quite a few, I guess.

"Customers also listened to" Anita Baker, Seal, Al Jarreau and Bruno Costa - I was wondering who Bruno was to be in such exalted company and it appears he's either the CEO of Costa Coffee or a Portuguese footballer. Whoever Bruno is, I think this is a fine album - nicely smooth, but not anodyne and it was a pleasure to revisit.

05/01/86 - A decent album to end the year
19/01/86 - A good example of that sort of thing