This is amazing, soul savin', skyscrapin', liberating

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

17/10/25 : Lovin' You - Richard Ashcroft

Yes, The Verve produced a couple of cracking tracks but I've never been convinced by anything Richard Ashcroft has done since (and some of his Covid-era pronouncements definitely didn't endear him to me). However, I've had several people say he was easily the best thing about the Oasis concerts this summer, so I'm a least a little intrigued as to what we've got here.

And yeah, having listened to it, I'm still pretty intrigued. I can't say I loved it, but I certainly enjoyed it way more than I was expecting to. There was a lot more variety there than he's shown any signs of before to me - the disco track was quite the surprise! I would say that some of the lyrics are very Adrian Mole declaring his love for Pandora, but overall this was certainly way better than any recent output from the Gallagher brothers. I also have to say I like the album cover.

We're at a surprisingly high (to me) #3 in the charts with a new entry - I guess his work on the Oasis tour hasn't done him any harm at all. The rest of the top five are Taylor Swift, Olivia Dean (I'm surprised she's holding up so well), Sabrina Carpenter and The Weeknd best-of (I REALLY don't understand how this is hanging around so well). And it's a funny old week for new entries this week, I can tell you...

Calum Scott (#31)
I'm sure Calum is a lovely earnest young man (although, at 37, he's not as young as I thought) but jaysus this is dull. Yawwwwwn.

OMD (#49)
Which made me think "oh, I didn't know they had new music out" but it turns out the reason for that is that this isn't new at all - it's a deluxe version of their '85 album Crush. So I don't think it really counts but I listened to some of it and enjoyed it, so I'll let them off

John Lennon & Yoko Ono (#72)
Whereas I'm afraid I'm not going to listen to the 9 CD/3 Bluray boxset of music which I'm almost certainly going to hate 90% of. Sorry!

The Orb (#77)
If you really love The Orb, then you'll like this but I'm afraid even I was overly challenged by the amount of repetition involved.

Tanita Tikaram (#92)
When Tanita was younger, I always thought she had quite an old voice. Now she's slightly older (her debut album came out in '88), she's really got quite the old voice indeed. I didn't mind this though - decent tunes, sung well.

The oddest re-entries this week are Madonna (#58) and Pinkpantheress (#59) - I'm intrigued as to what caused them to pop back in. Human League's Dare (#73) is also an odd one but I assume some 44th anniversary re-release is responsible - I'm also amused that #96-#100 are all re-entries. I'm obviously pleased that I managed to successfully predict Taylor would hang on to the #1 spot, but it doesn't feel like I'm going to be challenging Nostradamus just yet. If I get Richard right, I'll be amazed because I've got absolutely no clue so let's just go for #23 - I think he'll do bettter than most of his type manage. And the Taylor stats for the week are two in the top forty and six in the entire chart.

Wikipedia tells us this is his seventh album (all of which have made the top five) and that's pretty much all I've got for you. Let's venture into the potentially controversial territory of his entry, we learn absolutely nothing controversial at all. He actually comes across as a decent lad - he's been married to his wife for thirty years and spent several years out of the spotlight looking after his kids. So I've got a sneaking suspicion the whole thing has just been arranged to change my views of Mr Ashcroft - and, you know what, it's worked. Back to the album, the critical reviews have been nice enough without being stellar although The Quietus made me laugh with their catty "you’d think someone who is a million different people from one day to the next would have more than a couple of ideas in that busy noggin of his". Commercially, it's got to #10 in Ireland but hasn't really set the rest of the world alight.

After all the Taylor Swift related nonsense of last week, it's nice that discogs.com only has two identical vinyl copies and your choice is £24.99 for a normal copy or £69.99 for a copy with a signed print. I will not be spending anything on this, but the whole thing has been a useful exercise in making me think more kindly of the man because this really isn't a bad album, although I wouldn't say it's great. I think it's still the album of the week though, although I can see that Tanita Tikaram would be more preferable to many and if I didn't think OMD wasn't a real new entry then that would be in with a shout as well. 

10/10/25 - Decent enough, but also a whole load of nonsense