When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts.

19/08/79 : Breakfast In America - Supertramp

Our first visit with Supertramp and they're not a band I know much about - I think the title track of this album is their only song I know. In my head, they're like ELO in that they have a very distinctive sound with those that like it, liking it a lot - but I've never really investigated them to find out whether I'd like it. So let's give them a go, eh?

I don't mind the title track, but the more you listen to it, the odder it becomes - there's all sorts of instruments on there and the lyrics make absolutely no sense at all. I was surprised to also recognise (and quite like) "The Logical Song" and "Take The Long Way Home" - they're a bit less weird, but not a lot. There's definitely an ELO-esque "prog pop" feel to it, with vocoded voices and prominent keyboards, but I feel it manages to keep itself separate enough from them. It's very much of its time, but I enjoyed it considerably more than I was expecting and it feels like it would reward repeat listens without getting annoying (which I'm not sure is true for ELO). It's got quite the album cover too - I can't say I love it, but there's been a lot of thought gone into it. 

We're at #3 in the charts this week on their 22nd week of an impressive 53 week run, with this being as high as it got in its 7th and 19th-23rd weeks. The top five this week were The Best Disco Album In The World, Electric Light Orchestra, ABBA and Earth, Wind & Fire with the highest new entry being Tubeway Army (#40). 

Wikipedia has way more on the album than I was expecting (195 milliPeppers) and it tells me this is their sixth album and "In the UK, "The Logical Song" and the title track were both top 10 hits, the only two the group had in their native country". Woah, hold on there - Supertramp are British!?! I just assumed they were American, but apparently they formed in London in '70 - you live and you learn! Back to the album, it was originally intended to be about the relationship between Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson, the songwriting duo of the band - but it turned out they weren't able to write about such things, so they decided to stop thinking too much about things and just wrote a load of fun songs instead. 

Critically, it was pretty well received although our old mate Robert Christgau was decidedly sniffy about it, declaring "that the "hooky album" evokes "random grunts of pleasure" but lacks emotional substance" - retrospectively, everyone considers it a lot more positively with the 1987 edition of The World Critics List listing it as the fourth best album ever (which feels a little generous to me). The album also won the 1980 Grammy Award for Best Recording Package (which basically means "best album cover"). Commercially, it did amazingly well globally, getting to #1 in Australia, Canada, France (where it's the fourth best selling album ever), Germany, Spain and the US - and despite only getting to #3 here, it was #4 in the year-end list so it didn't exactly fail here, but still seems to have flown somewhat under the radar.

discogs.com tells us that you can pick up a version for about three quid (with a surprising number of cassette versions on sale, which is unusual) but, for some weird reason, if you want a copy of the '83 remastered version with a Nimbus sticker on the cover (whatever one of them is), it will set you back £500 - which is impressive. I enjoying listening to this and I've enjoyed learning about the group - it feels like an important gap in my musical knowledge has been at least partially filled. And I'm even tempted to revisit the album, with the expectation that I'd enjoy it more second time around - high praise indeed!

12/08/79 - Pretty decent
26/08/79 - A pretty fine compilation album