No matter what I do - all I think about is you

Continuing my trip back through the 2003 album charts.

23/02/03 : Simply Deep - Kelly Rowland


Our second album this year from a Destiny's Child graduate - I'm expecting this to be perfectly fine but not something I feel the need for in my life. And for some strange reason, I'm only allowed to listen to the clean version on my streaming service of choice - I struggle to imagine the original was littered with expletives...

I was surprised to recognise "Dilemma" which has a nice chorus, but there's remarkably little else to it (and it underlines this by repeating the chorus about a million times). And that theme is repeated in a lot of the songs - they've got a decent enough hook to them but they just use it over and over. Across the album there actually feels to be enough variety, but it's just that I got bored with a lot of the songs - which isn't exactly a great situation to be in. If you like Destiny's Child then I can't see any reason why you won't like this, but it's not something I am ever going to visit again.

We're at #8 in the charts this week on her third week of a surprisingly long 21 week run, with it having peaked at an even more surprising #1 in its debut week. The top five this week were Justin Timberlake, 50 Cent (a new entry), a Tom Jones best-of (another new entry), Avril Lavigne and Red Hot Chili Peppers with the next highest new entry being Ed Harcourt (all the way down at #39). 

Wikipedia has quite a lot on the album (196 milliPeppers) and it tells us it's her debut album. The idea was that all Destiny's Child's members would record solo album whilst the group were on a hiatus. Michelle Williams was the first out of the blocks and Beyoncé was to be next, but "Dilemma" appeared on Nelly's Nellyville and stormed the charts globally, so Kelly's offering was brought forward (and obviously includes "Dilemma"). This meant it was all done in a bit of a rush, with the album being produced in three weeks - Kelly was nervous and pressurised to start with, but got up to speed quickly (because she's a professional, don't you know!). 

The critics were "mixed to lukewarm" on it, with complaints ranging from "too diverse" to "an abundance of cheesy folk/R&B". I did like Entertainment Weekly's comment that "Rowland, at times, seems like Destiny's adopted child" though. Commercially, somewhat surprisingly, this was the only country where it got to #1 here (although it did made it to #2 in Ireland) - I'm not sure quite why we went so mad for it, especially since it only got to #12 in the US. Looking at her entry, this was very much the high point for her here, but she kept it going for four successful albums in the US before giving it all up to judge people on The X Factor and The Voice, which feels like a lot less effort.

"Customers also listened to" Blu Cantrell, Jamelia, Stormy Bugsy and 3LW - well, I've heard of Jamelia at least. I thought this was perfectly fine, but incredibly repetitive and forgettable - I'm surprised it was quite so successful over here.

16/02/03 - Some interesting bleeps
02/03/03 - Could have been far, far worse

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