We met at 9 - we met at 8. I was on time - no, you were late

Continuing my trip back through the 1959 album charts.

20/12/59 : Gigi - Original Soundtrack


I have heard of Gigi, but I think that's about as far as my knowledge goes - it could be good or it could be awful!

Hmmm - it's really not great. It feels like it's going for a French My Fair Lady kinda vibe, but there's not enough lyrical content for me to understand the plot - I'm sure it's all clearer in the film, but I was completely lost just listening to the album. Another slight problem is that it seems that most people involved can't really sing and there's also an awful lot of orchestral twiddling included, which is completely unnecessary (and makes the album 75 minutes long!). When there are some lyrics, they're quite well done with "I Remember It Well" being particularly impressive - "Thank Heaven For Little Girls" has some wince-inducing lyrics, but let's just say it was written in different times.  

We're at #3 in the charts this week on its 46th week of an 85 week run, with it spending the first 49 weeks in the top five, and 29 weeks at #2, but it never made the top spot. The rest of the top five were the South Pacific soundtrack, Cliff, Russ Conway and the My Fair Lady soundtrack and we there are no new entries or named women in the charts this week.

Wikipedia has an entry for the album, but does nothing more than tells me it exists. The film's entry is considerably longer and tells me it was written by Lerner & Loewe (who also did My Fair Lady). It was a big thing as well, being nominated for nine Oscars and winning all of them, which was a record at the time (but broken by Ben Hur next year, which won eleven). It also tells us that Leslie Caron who played Gigi, is still with us at the grand old age of 93 and she still pops up in things from time to time if she's feeling a bit bored!

"Customers also listened to" "no similar recommendations" which doesn't overly surprise me because it was ridiculously hard to find the album on Amazon, which was only interested in showing me artists called Gigi. And having made that effort, it was totally not worth it - but I am quite intrigued to watch the film because it has to be better than it sounds from the album.

13/12/59 - Truly dreadful
27/12/59 - Pretty inessential

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