When it comes down to loving you, he ain't no competition

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts.

27/11/88 : Get Even - Brother Beyond


Hmmm - I suspect I'm not going to like this...

Well - I can't say I liked it, but I also didn't hate it. It's interesting to compare this with Rick Astley's recent offering because whilst that was average material elevated by his voice, this is average material not in the slightest bit elevated by their voices. It's not a SAW album, but it might as well be - it features a couple of tracks produced by them and it's not like you can easily pick them out. I'm sure this hit the spot for those in the market for such things but it's all completely forgettable to me - but I'm at least thankful it wasn't hateful.

We're at #9 in the charts this week on their second week of a 20 week run, with this being as high as it got. The top five this week were Now! 13 (a new entry), Kylie and best-ofs from Cliff, Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Dire Straits with the next highest new entry being Pink Floyd (#11) with a live album I'm not sure I even knew existed.

Wikipedia tells us this is their debut album and was released in two versions, one without the SAW singles and one with - and unsurprisingly there's no evidence of the former version on any streaming service these days. There's very little else of interest on there except for the curious fact that it was recorded at fourteen different studios, but an interesting name pops up as a member of the group. I'd forgotten where I'd heard of their drummer Eg White before, but he went on to greater things as a songwriter including Will Young's "Leave Right Now" and Adele's "Chasing Pavements" (amongst MANY others). Back to the album, there's absolutely no word on the critical reception (amusingly, the Google AI overview says it's "generally considered a decent, albeit somewhat generic, debut album of the boy band era") and commercially, it did best here but also got to #63 in Germany. 

I struggle to imagine there are any wildly expensive versions of this out there but you never know - amusingly, discogs.com tells me there are no copies available in the UK, but if you head to mainland Europe you can pick up a decent copy for a couple of euro, but there's one in Italy for 38€ (plus 22€ postage!) if you fancy going mad. I will not be doing so - it's just not for me, but even with my limited knowledge of the genre this just felt bang average, I'm afraid. But it's not hateful.

20/11/88 - The mystery stays unsolved
04/12/88 - Much better than expected

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