Used to think that life was sweet, used to think we were so complete

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts.

30/09/79 : Rock'n'Roll Juvenile - Cliff Richard

There's really no escaping Cliff, is there?!? This is our sixth visit with him, but do you know - I'm actually expecting this to be bearable. Not great mind (or rock'n'roll or juvenile), but bearable - don't let me down, Cliff!

Yeah - it's definitely bearable with Cliff being in "not exactly cool, but not totally unhip" mode. There's no obvious musical theme to the album with him trying out pop, rock, funk and soul and "Sci-Fi" is kinda prog-disco, which is most peculiar, but none of the tracks are awful. And even I have to admit "Carrie" and "We Don't Talk Any More" are actually pretty decent, although it's weird the latter is the last track on the album.

We're at #4 in the charts this week on his fourth week of a fourteen week run, with this being as high as it got in its second, third and fourth weeks - but it came back for an eight week run after New Year. The rest of the top five were Gary Numan, Boney M, The Shadows and Electric Light Orchestra - not exactly the coolest top five we'll see this year, I suspect and the highest new entry was The Stranglers (#6).

Wikipedia tells us this is his 22nd studio album and that "We Don't Talk Any More" is his biggest ever single - one of TWELVE #1s he's had, but his only one in the 70s. The album was produced by Terry Britten who was one of Cliff's regular songwriters and he also wrote most of the songs on this album (he also wrote Tina Turner's "What's Love Got To Do With It", which was originally intended for Cliff, but was actually first recorded by Bucks Fizz) along with BA Robertson (who I never knew co-wrote Mike & The Mechanics "The Living Years"). Critically, it was well received, except by Smash Hits who only gave it 3/10 (they must have gone negative for some of his later offerings) and commercially, it did better than you might expect elsewhere, getting to #6 in Germany - but only #93 in the US.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent version of a couple of quid, but if you really want to splash out, you're out of luck because the most you can spend is £6.66 - bizarrely, it's much easier to get hold of a copy in Germany than the UK. There's no danger of me revisiting this, but I have to admit it's not dreadful and probably my favourite Cliff visit so far (to be fair, it's a low bar to get over) - I do worry how many more I'm going to have to endure though.

23/09/79 - Fine if you like that sort of thing
07/10/79 - Most peculiar

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