Of course you can say it backwards, which is Suoicodilaipxecitsiligarfilacrepus

Starting my trip back through the 1965 album charts.

26/12/65 : Mary Poppins - Original Soundtrack

Only our third visit with Ms Andrews, but given that she's given us The Sound Of Music, My Fair Lady and now this, she's not doing too badly, is she? 

Yeah, this is a pretty decent album which includes all the bangers you know and love. The tracks featuring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke (both still with us at 89 and 99 - and looking very good for it, particularly Dick) are probably the best known, but the songs by the Banks family members are also well done with Glynis Johns (who only died last year, aged 100) and David Tomlinson doing a fine job. I'd particularly forgotten how good "A Man Has Dreams" was, where Mr Banks is complaining to Bert about his kids and Bert totally agrees with him, whilst also pointing out how he's being an arse because childhood flies by so quickly. All in all, it's a fine collection of songs which I enjoyed - but it's a bit bizarre how much the picture on the cover doesn't look like Julie Andrews.

We're at #3 in the charts this week on its 51st week of an impressive 80 week run, with it peaking at #2 in 46th and 47th weeks - it never made it to #1. The top five this week were The Beatles' Rubber Soul, more Julie with The Sound Of Music, more Beatles with Help! and Joan Baez (who's been very hard done by so far because she's been mentioned loads but we're yet to meet her, so I'm hoping that will happen soon - and hoping to like her) and there are no new entries in the chart, which is only twenty albums at this point in time.

Wikipedia has an entry for the album, but bizarrely the biggest section is on songs that are not only not on the album, but not even in the film - who cares?!? Whether they made the cut or not, the songs were written by Richard M (who only died last year) and Robert B Sherman who wrote a load of stuff including The Jungle Book and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang which are, in my book, pretty fine offerings. However, Wikipedia tells me their best known work is "It's A Small World", which is apparently possibly the most publicly performed song in history - so I take back all the nice thoughts I ever had about them because that's a horror show. This was a fantastically successful album though - it sold over four million copies in the US alone and six million globally.

"Customers also listened to" "no similar recommendations" which someone surprised me, but there will be a weird reason to do with album versions or something. I enjoyed this though and I imagine it still gets a fair few listens amongst families with kids of a certain age - and I also imagine the parents find themselves singing along at times, despite themselves.

19/12/65 - A fine album
1959 - Our first decade completed