Boy bands and another one and another one - and another one

Continuing my trip back through the 2003 album charts.

24/08/03 : Busted - Busted 

Our second visit with the Busted lads - I didn't mind them last time and I'm expecting much of the same here.

Yeah, for the most part, that's what we've got here - some cheeky chappy pop (or punk, as the Americans bizarrely like to call it). "Year 3000" is obviously the high point - I love that song way more than I should, even if I'm still annoyed that there's no way my great-great-great-granddaughter is still going to be alive in 3000, let alone be pretty fine. The rest of the album is pretty much along similar lines but I do have to say that "What I Go To School For" is surprisingly creepy and "Losing You" and "Without You" both veer dangerously close to Westlife territory. I feel I preferred A Present For Everyone, but they're both fine for what they are, although I thought this was less fun than I was expecting.

We're at #2 in the charts this week on their 41st week of an impressive 74 week run, with this being as high as it got (as well as in its seventh week). The rest of the top five were Eva Cassidy, The Darkness, Daniel Bedingfield and Robbie Williams and the next highest entry was Elbow (#7) with Cast Of Thousands, which is a pretty decent album. 

Wikipedia tells me this is their debut album but doesn't have a lot more about it other than listing all the singles several times and telling us that The Jonas Brothers' debut album includes covers of both "What I Go To School For" and "Year 3000" (which can't have done Busted any harm). Critical reception was mixed and amusingly, Matt Willis isn't a fan of "Losing You" - "we've never played that song (live). For a very good reason – we don't like it. It's not very good". Commercially it did very well though - it was the ninth best selling album of the year here (selling 1.2 million copies) and it got to #5 in Ireland, #9 in Denmark and an impressive #25 in Japan.

"Customers also listened to" McBusted, Son Of Dork, McFly and V - very similar sounds to Busted as much as I'm aware of them. This album wasn't really aimed at me - I didn't mind it but was also a bit underwhelmed by most of it, with the notable exception of "Year 3000" which I won't hear a word against.

17/08/03 - Perplexingly popular
31/08/03 - Not sure why I thought I didn't like this