Can I tell you a secret? I'm so sick of it all

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

08/08/25 : Bite Me - Reneé Rapp 

Renee Rapp is a name that has popped up quite a lot recently, without me actually becoming aware of any of her output - so let's see what we've got here.

Hmmm. I get the feeling she thinks she's pretty damn sexy and I can imagine that she puts on a charismatic live performance, but listening to it, it just all got very tiresome. It's not terrible and is surprisingly retro in '00s Jamelia stylee, but there's just not enough there to click for me. Having said that, I also have a slight suspicion that Reneé isn't really aiming for me as her audience.

We're at #1 with a new entry in the chart this week and the rest of the top five are Oasis, Oasis, Alex Warren and the Fleetwood Mac best-of (really?) - it's a very best-of heavy top ten this week because we've also got The Weeknd and Michael Jackson at #9 and #10. So what other new entries have we got this week?

Roger Waters (#20)
Last week we had a live album from a 67 year old with 24 tracks lasting over two hours - this week we have the same, but from an 81 year old! And, as with Gary, I didn't listen to it all, but I did at least know more tracks on this and they all sounded pretty good - it was also nice to see a track from Radio KAOS on there. If you like Floyd, I struggle to imagine you won't like this.

Cian Ducrot (#31)
Last time we met Cian, he was at #1 with a new entry, so this is a bit of a drop for the lad - and it's hard to know why because it's pretty similar with some Oirish male singer-songwriter vibes which are all perfectly fine if you're in the mood for such things.

Elvis Presley (#67)
Sorry, but I've met enough Elvis over the years to not feel the need to listen to an 89 track, 5.5 hour collection of songs from the 70s - knock yourself out if it's your cup of tea though.

The New Eves (#88)
I'd never heard of this lot, so I had no idea what to expect - but whatever I might have expected, it wasn't this. I'm sure some would give it the dreaded "post-punk" label, but I'd suggest it feels more "pre-punk" - there's obviously a reasonable amount of skill involved, but they're going out of their way to make it a challenging listen, with some interesting anti-harmonies, drones and spoken word on there. I can't say I loved it, but it was nice to hear something different from the usual fare - and this was certainly very different.

Last week I said that The K's would be at #88, but feared they'd be a "one and done" and that is the case, with all of last week's new entries having dropped out of the chart entirely - things are definitely all a bit broken at the minute and it's very tricky to know how they could fix it. I think Reneé will hang around for a bit, but not as much as she'd like so let's got for #37. We do have a particularly wild and wacky re-entry though with Richard Hawley's Coles Corner being at #16 - it was originally released in '05 so I assume a 20 year anniversary re-issue is responsible. It's also nice to see Ozzy's best-of back in at #40 and most peculiar to see the best-ofs from Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler re-enter at #99 and #100 for the THIRD time this year. And this week's Taylor stats are one in the top forty and five in the entire chart - she's on her way back!

Wikipedia has way more than I was expecting on the album (226 milliPeppers) - I struggled to imagine what they were going to say about it and having read it, I'd struggle to tell you what they did say. It's her second album and apparently it's a deeply personal affair that reflects where her life is at the minute. I was pleased to read that it "received mixed reviews from critics, with several noting Rapp's use of sexuality in her music, while others mentioned the album's lack of direction" because that was pretty much what I was trying to say. It's done pretty well commercially though, making the top five in quite a few European countries and getting to #1 in The Netherlands. 

Somewhat surprisingly, discogs.com can only offer you one copy which is a CD with a signed insert delivered from France for 40 Euros. I think I can resist it - it just all felt very meh, but let's just go for "not aimed at me". All in all, it's not really a great week for albums for me - Roger Waters would be the only one I'd choose to listen to again (if forced to) but I have to applaud The New Eves for doing something different.

01/08/25 - Decent enough, I guess
15/08/25 - Very average

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