There is no monopoly on common sense on either side of the political fence

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts

02/02/86 : The Dream Of The Blue Turtles - Sting

I have listened to this album, but not for a very, very long time - I remember the singles but nothing more, so it will be interesting to see what I make of it. STOP PRESS - I'm told we owned it (making it six for the year) which makes it clear exactly memorable it must be!

Well, over half the album were singles and I also knew some of the others from his Bring On The Night album which I own and quite like, so I actually recognised most of the album. All in all, I quite liked it - it is (of course) overly earnest but it's all quite interesting musically, being much jazzier than I remembered.

We're at #6 in the charts this week on his 33rd week of an impressive 64 week run, with it peaking at #3 in its first week. The top five this week were Dire Straits, A-ha, Level 42 and compilations from Barbra Streisand and Grace Jones and the highest new entry was The Dance Hits Album all the way down at #50.

Wikipedia has less on the album than you might expect - it's his debut solo effort, is named after a dream he had and it has some songs on it, one of which randomly features Eddy Grant on congas. The critics were mostly nice enough about it and it did well commercially, getting to #1 in Australia and The Netherlands and #2 in the US.

"Customers also listened to" Peter Gabriel, Annie Lennox, Seal and Bruce Hornsby - a bunch of very serious people! I think this is a pretty decent album (although not as good as Ten Summoners Tales) and he took things in a slightly different direction than he might have done, so he has to be commended for that. I do feel I should have found more to say about it though!

26/01/86 - A somewhat peculiar album
09/02/86 - An OK album, at best