Looking back, how did I get here?

Continuing my trip back through the 2003 album charts.

30/11/03 : Introduction - Alex Parks

I don't remember Alex, but because she looks about ten on the album cover, I suspect she might be a talent show graduate.

Hmmm - this is an odd one. There are some original songs on here which aren't absolutely top notch, but they're certainly passable and they're well sung - Alex has a nice voice and it certainly sounds stronger than Dido's (whose songs were also often not top notch). But then there are the covers - SIX of them, which is waaay too many. Some of the choices are quite interesting with R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts" being particularly well done and Eurythmics' "Here Comes The Rain Again" is decent enough - but absolutely nobody needs another version of John Lennon's "Imagine" in their life. So, all in all, it feels a bit like a wasted opportunity - if they'd spent a bit more time on it then I think I would have been much nicer about it.

We're at #5 with a new entry on the chart this week on the start of an impressive sixteen week run, with this being as high as it got. The rest of the top five were Westlife (a new entry), Michael Jackson, Dido and Busted with the next highest new entry being Enrique Iglesias (#13).

Wikipedia tells us it's her debut album and was released within two weeks of her winning Fame Academy, so I think we can see why it all feels a bit rushed. And that's pretty much all it has to say on the matter, with no word on critical response and it only charted over here. Looking at her entry, it tells us she was 18 when she won Fame Academy and sang "Imagine" in the final so I guess it had to be included. There was also some controversy because Daniel Bedingfield duetted with the final two contestants and afterwards just told everyone to "go vote for Alex", which doesn't seem entirely fair. She did release another album, but got dropped by her label after that and retired from the business at the grand old age of 22.

"Customers also listened to" Caroline Glaser (The Voice), Kym Marsh (Popstars), Ainslie Henderson (Fame Academy) and Sinead Quinn (also Fame Academy) - I guess a certain kind of people like to get their music from TV shows! I quite liked bits of this, but as an album it just felt like a half-arsed rush-job - things could surely have been handled much better and maybe she'd have had greater success as a result.

23/11/03 - Incredibly forgettable
07/12/03 - Why?