Yesterday, somebody whacked out my mural

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

29/11/24 : GNX - Kendrick Lamar

Our fourth visit with Mr Lamar and I never really know what to say about his music - there's a lot to admire about it, but I don't love it and I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it. And there's absolutely no reason to assume that there's going to be anything different about this.

Nope, not really! Maybe it's a bit more accessible than our previous visits, but there's nothing here for me to love. Yes, it's all sonically interesting, but I'm still perplexed by the whole experience - people seem to love it, but I've no idea why.

We're at #1 in the charts with a new entry this week (his second #1) and the rest of the top five are Michael Kiwanuka (another new entry), Sabrina Carpenter, Limp Bizkit (a much better performance than I expected) and Charli XCX (out on tour, so people are back). And, getting close to Christmas, we have a load of new entries to consider this week!

Michael Kiwanuka (#3)
A lovely smooth album and I particularly liked the title track. It's not nearly as one dimensionally bland as I feared, sounding surprisingly like Blur in places and Pink Floyd in others.

Father John Misty (#12)
Some fine overblown dramatics with lots of ridiculous words which I have to be in the mood for, but I found myself enjoying it - he really does have a lovely voice!

Wizkid (#14)
LIke my last visit, this is very much not my sort of thing, but I found it well put together and surprisingly bearable

Marilyn Manson (#36)
The expected electro-goth nonsense - fine if you like that sort of thing but, whilst I like some of the sounds, it's all a bit too much for me.

Opeth (#42)
Shouty-metal nonsense - I find it more amusing than anything else. And I've absolutely no idea how he sings like that!

Kim Deal (#45)
A female singer-songwriter - so right up my street! It often reminded me of Rilo Kiley and her voice isn't a million miles away from Jenny Lewis's (she also sounds quite like Debbie Harry in places as well).

Joan Armatrading (#69)
This is an interesting one - her voice certainly isn't what it was, but it's a decent set of songs, she's 73 and she plays all the instruments on it (including some very fine guitar) so I think we can let her off!

Last week I said that Linkin Park would drop to #45 and we've already seen how wrong I got that - although I think there's probably a decent argument the charts got it wrong because there's no way the album deserved to stay so high. I suspect Kendrick is going to do something similar, so let's go for #4 for him as well and this week's Taylor stats are three in the top forty and eight in the entire chart.

Wikipedia tells us this is his sixth album (and I've had to listen to four of them!) and it's named after a Buick Regal model (obviously). It doesn't feature any of his tracks from his recent feud with Drake but apparently "its sentiment still looms over the album" - I can assure you I didn't notice. Obviously the critics loved it because the man could fart for forty minutes and they'd declare it a triumph, although apparently The Times expressed "disappointment towards Lamar's self-aggrandizement that deviated from his intellectually provocative themes on past albums" - whatever that means. And it's done OK commercially, getting to #1 in Australia, The Netherlands, Ireland, Lithuania, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden and will almost certainly get there in the US as well.

"Customers also listened to" "no similar recommendations" - has Amazon given up on doing this? At the very least, I'm pretty certain the other Kendrick albums would feature on such a list - and, whilst I don't hate any of them, I'm fine with others doing the listening for me.

22/11/24 - Not for me
06/12/24 - A dull mess