I'm here just like I said

Continuing my trip back through the 2003 album charts.

21/12/03 : Friday's Child - Will Young

Our fourth visit with Mr Young - he's done well for himself over the years. I generally don't mind his stuff without being a huge fan - unlike the lovely Mrs Reed, so this is the second album of the year "we" own.

It starts with a very decent version of "Love The One You're With" (I don't think I knew this was written by Stephen Stills). Whereas "Leave Right Now" is an original track, but sounds like a classic for the ages. The rest of it isn't quite to that level, but it's all pretty decent and there's no denying he's got a fine voice and the production is also at a high level here. I still wouldn't declare myself a massive fan but he's definitely one of the best things to have come out from the talent shows and he deserves the long career he's had.

We're at #2 in the charts this week on his third week of an impressive 42 week run, with it spending its first and fifth weeks at #1. He also managed a seven week run in '05 - I assume one of his other albums dragged it back into the public's awareness. The rest of the top five this week were Dido, a Michael Jackson best-of, The Black Eyed Peas and an R.E.M. best-of and there were no new entries in the chart, which isn't unusual for the week before Christmas.

Wikipedia doesn't tell us a lot about it other than that it's his second album and the critics liked it, particularly because he'd made the decision to leave Simon Cowell - I was surprised to see that "Your Game" won the Brit Award for Best Single in 2005 because it's fine but no more than that. The album only did anything commercially here and in Ireland but got to #1 in both countries, selling approximately 1,713,929 copies here (why does Wikipedia do that?).

"Customers also listened to" Gareth Gates (of course), David Sneddon, Darius and Michelle McManus - a clean sweep of talent show graduates. But Will has certainly moved beyond such a tag - and I suspect this album helped him a lot with that.

14/12/03 - Astonishingly tolerable
28/12/03 - Perfectly pleasant, but...