She sits alone waiting for suggestions - he's so nervous avoiding all the questions

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts.

11/03/79 : Blondes Have More Fun - Rod Stewart


Our eleventh visit with Rod and he's going to be in full disco mode, isn't he? I very much doubt I'm going to like it, but I suspect I'll enjoy thinking how much more my Dad would have hated it back then - he was NOT a Rod fan...

Oh yes - we open with "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?" which I suspect even the most hardcore Rod fans would struggle to argue is his best track (although it did get to #1, so I guess plenty of people liked it). However, I was pleasantly surprised that was as disco as things got with most of the rest of it being more typical rock-and-roll-Rod or ballad-Rod, and a somewhat peculiar choice of cover of The Four Tops' "Standing In The Shadow Of Love", which he could easily have ruined but it was actually surprisingly decent. I can't say I loved this album but it wasn't anywhere close to being as bad as I was expecting, so I have to give him some credit for that.

We're at #12 in the charts this week on his fifteenth week of a 31 week run, with it having peaked at #3 for its first four weeks, kept off the top by the Grease soundtrack and best-ofs from Neil Diamond and The Carpenters. The top five this week were Bee Gees, Blondie, Barry Manilow, Elvis Costello and Chic (just starting a seven week run in the top five) and the highest new entry was Skids (#19), who featured Stuart Adamson (who went on to bigger things with Big Country) and Richard Jobson (who went on to somewhat smaller sized things on telly). 

Wikipedia tells us it's his ninth album and "as was the popular musical trend at the time, it is Stewart's foray into disco music" (which I guess is true, but not entirely accurate). Rod defended this by saying "that Paul McCartney and The Rolling Stones had also dabbled with disco music" - I have heard some of The Stones' efforts but have thankfully avoided Macca's. Critically, the reviews weren't all that favourable but after some time in the 70s, Rod became pretty critic-proof and commercially it did very well, getting to #1 in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and the US, selling ten million copies globally. Steady on guys - I said it wasn't that bad, not go absolutely mad for it...

discogs.com tells us it's not overly sought out these days because you can pick up a decent version for a quid but there is version available for £80 with no obvious reason for it being that much. I certainly won't be spending any money on this or even listening to it again, but it wasn't the all-out offence on my eardrums that I thought it might be. High praise indeed.

04/03/79 - Nicely of its time
18/03/79 - A very decent album I never knew existed

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