Give me just a second then I'll be alright

Continuing my trip back through the 2003 album charts.

17/08/03 : Gotta Get Thru This - Daniel Bedingfield 

I remember both Daniel and Natasha making one or two decent singles but mostly producing distinctly average fare - but I don't think I've experienced an album from either of them, so I might yet come out of this realising the error of my ways (I'm not expecting to though).

Well, I guess the title track, "If You're Not The One" and "I Can't Read You" have pretty decent hooks to them, but beyond that they are pretty repetitive - and that's true for the rest of the album, but often without the hooks. He's also got a very drippy voice and I get the impression he thinks he's much edgier than he really is -  a bit like the album cover where I feel he's aiming for a hard man look but comes across as a junior accountant. None of it is hateful, but I struggle to see why anyone would subject themselves to an album of it - I was very much reminded of Savage Garden, who are another artist where I really struggle to understand their popularity.

We're at #3 in the charts this week on his 44th week of a 72 week run, with it peaking at #2 in its 41st week - this was actually it's second run out of four, with it having other runs of 4, 8 and 4 weeks. The rest of the top five were Eva Cassidy (a new entry which was rejected because it's a compilation, but I checked it out anyway - it's fine but inessential), Robbie Williams, Sean Paul and The Coral and the next highest entry is Kosheen (#7) with Kokopelli, which I think is a very underrated album.

Wikipedia has very little on the album - it's his debut and spawned three #1 singles (which seems a bit mad). The critics were nice enough about it, but it did very well commercially, particularly here where it sold 1.6 million copies - I'm afraid I just don't understand why.

"Customers also listened to" Will Young, Craig David, Mis-Teeq and Blue - which is an interesting mix, to say the least. Will and Craig are interesting comparisons because you can see that Daniel's aiming for somewhere between the two, but for me he falls short of both - quite how it was so popular is beyond me.

10/08/03 - Quite interesting sounds
24/08/03 - Not as fun as I expected