Let the music make you rise up

Continuing my trip back through the 2003 album charts.

23/03/03 : Neon Nights - Dannii Minogue


I always thought Dannii was somewhat fortunate with her pop career - having a more talented sister doesn't really feel like it should be the basis for success. I'm expecting this to be tolerable but lacking in any obvious talent and absolutely inessential.

Oh yes - and then some. Kylie's hardly a vocal powerhouse but Dannii's voice just sounds so weak and all the tracks are very unmemorable - you can quite imagine her only being given those that Kylie had already rejected. None of it's terrible but, for the avoidance of doubt, this is not an album anyone needs (and the version I listened to was 150 minutes long - I managed an hour of it!).

As well as being lucky to have a career, she was also very lucky to get a write-up because we're all the way down at #8 with a new entry this week, having skipped over several other albums to get there. She managed an eight week run (pleasingly featuring a drop each week) which is eight more than it deserved for me, but anniversary versions recharted in '18 and '23 so there's obviously more love for it out there than I expect. The top five this week were Norah Jones, Coldplay, Daniel O'Donnell (thankfully rejected because it's a compilation), Christina Aguilera and Paul McCartney (a new entry which was thankfully rejected because it's a live album - and two hours long). There was also one more new entry in the top ten - Boyzone (#6 - thankfully rejected because it's a compilation).

Wikipedia has way more than I was expecting (185 milliPeppers) on the album and it tells me it's her FOURTH album. Apparently her third album was not successful and she'd pretty much retired from making records - and you get hundred points if you guess who gave her a second chance. Yeah, obviously it was Pete Tong  who got her to record the vocals for "Who Do You Love Now?" which did well across Europe and so she got another record deal which resulted in this - which turned out to be her most successful album. To my surprise, the critics were mostly very nice about it with even retrospective reviews declaring it a classic of the genre but commercially it only really did anything here and in Australia, where it got to #25. It also tells me I was lucky I only got the 150 minute version - one of the 20th anniversary reissues came as a SEVEN CD box set with 100 tracks on it! Who on earth needs that in their life?!?

"Customers also listened to" Kylie, Louise, Lisa Scott-Lee and Rachel Stevens - some of the finest vocal talent known to man. Maybe. But I'm not sure Dannii comes off well in comparison with any of them and there's certainly nothing on this album that convinced me otherwise.

16/03/03 - A disappointing follow-up
30/03/03 - Surprisingly listenable but perfectly inessential

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