Yes, you're suitably at one with your body and the sun

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts.

14/08/88 : Push - Bros

Johnny Hates Jazz and now Bros - 1988, you're really spoiling me! I am, however, expecting some grudging admiration here though - they did what did well, didn't they?

First up is "When Will I Be Famous?", which I can't claim to be my favourite track, but I have to admit it pushed exactly the (pre-)teen buttons it intended to - as does "Drop The Boy", which immediate follows it. It's interesting to compare this album with Johnny Hates Jazz, because Matt & Luke's voices come out surprising well in comparison - they're hitting the notes they want to rather than being somewhere in the vicinity of them. However, as a whole, this is just SO much more annoying - it just got totally grating after three or four tracks and the "quality" quite obvious dropped off towards the end. Working on the principle that this is what they wanted my reaction to be, then I guess I have give them some grudging admiration - but it really wasn't an enjoyable experience.

We're at #11 in the charts this week on their 20th week of an impressive 53 week run, but surprisingly it never made it to #1, getting to #2 in its 1st, 2nd and 13th week. The top five this week were Now! 12, Kylie, Fairground Attraction, Tracy Chapman and Hits 8 and the highest new entry was The Mac Band featuring The McCampbell Brothers (no, me neither) all the way down at #61.

Wikipedia tells us it's their debut album and it did far better than it deserved to (although they don't use that turn of phrase). All the songs were written by Nicky Graham and Bros' manager Tom Watkins under the pseudonym "The Brothers" to make people think that Matt and Luke did the work - sneaky! Looking at the band's entry I learned that Craig Logan, the other band member ("Ken" as Smash Hits called him) left the band due to illness and went on to become pretty senior at several record labels. 

Back to the album, the critical reviews were surprisingly positive although Record Mirror did call it "mediocrity's snowy mountain-top" (which I'd argue is unfair because whilst many adjectives are appropriate, I don't think this album is mediocre) and commercially it did well, making the top ten in quite a few countries and getting to #1 in Ireland and New Zealand, selling 12 million copies globally. It only got to #171 in the US though - they never cracked things over there.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent version for a quid but, amazingly, if you want the double CD reissue then it's going to set you back £150 - I assumed this was just someone trying it on, but there are only two for sale and they're both a similar price, so there must be something special about it. However, having listened to the album, I really struggle to imagine anything special about it - in case you missed it, I did not like this album. 

07/08/88 - A lovely album with many happy memories
21/08/88 - Tolerable