Ooh, baby, do you know what that's worth?

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts.

03/07/88 : Heaven On Earth - Belinda Carlisle

I liked "Heaven Is A Place On Earth" and "Circle In The Sand" but there would have been absolutely no chance of me having chosen to listen to this at the time. Fortunately, I'm older and wiser now - although I have a sneaking suspicion that a whole album is going to be too much Belinda.

It opens with HIAPOE and, whether you like it or not (and I still do), you have to admit it presses the "building to a rousing chorus" buttons it's aiming for. I actually think CITS is a better track - it's got strong Fleetwood Mac Tango In The Night vibes. The rest of the album isn't quite such quality but there's nothing dreadful about any of it. A lot of the tracks are the sort of average US soft rock that plenty of bands were churning out throughout the 80s, but they are made a bit more interesting here by having a female vocal. It doesn't feel like there were too many women doing similar things - the internet suggests Pat Benatar and Taylor Dayne, which seem like good shouts. And Belinda's got a good voice except that in quite a few places someone decided it was a good idea to have her sing lower than she was comfortable doing - and it just seems so obvious that I'm amazed they kept at it. But overall, it's a decent enough album with a couple of highlights which pushed it out of the pack.

We're at #11 in the charts this week on her 28th week of an impressive 47 week run, with it having peaked at #4 in its 25th week and also popping back into the chart in '91 for no obvious reason. The top five this week were Tracy Chapman, Billy Idol, Bros, Steve Winwood and Fleetwood Mac with the highest new entry being Robert Palmer (#17).

Wikipedia tells us this is her second album - there's not an awful lot of content in there, but there are some odd snippets if you dig around. I recognised "I Feel Free" as a cover but had to be reminded it was originally by Cream - I bet Ginger Baker had some choice words on the matter when he heard it. We also learn that Thomas Dolby played keyboards and a whole host of people provided backing vocals including one of The Mamas & Papas, two thirds of Wilson Philips (before WP existed) and a Go-Go. She also recorded "Waiting For A Star To Fall" for the album but chose not to include it, with it going on to be a big hit for Boy Meets Girl (who actually wrote it). Critically, the album received mixed reviews - most were positive but Billboard said "the transmogrification from Go-Go to no-no is complete", which suggests to me they'd written that sentence before they'd even listened to the thing. Commercially, it did pretty well selling over two million copies globally, getting to #4 in the US, #3 in Sweden and a fabulous chart-topping #1 in Norway.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent CD or vinyl copy for a quid, but if you want the triple album 30th anniversary release then you're going to have to shell out £275 or you could go for the Record Store Day picture disc version for £200. Seriously?!? This album isn't really my sort of thing (I'd generally go for either poppier or rockier) but I didn't mind it at all - it's nicely of it its time without really feeling dated.

10/07/88 - A curiously detached experience