I know about all your faults - somehow they never deter me

Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts.

20/02/94 : So Close - Dina Carroll


Another one "we" own (fourteen for the year) - I seem to recall she had a nice voice and some decent enough songs. whilst not exactly being my sort of thing.

Yeah, that's pretty much where we are. I remembered "Ain't No Man" and "Don't Be A Stranger" and didn't mind them at all - the rest of the album is maybe not quite at that level but it's there or there abouts. It felt a bit old school but seeing as we've already had Eternal, Mariah Carey and Toni Braxton this year then it was obviously a sound that was going down well. She's definitely got a nice voice though - Anita Baker sprang to mind but I really claim to be an expert on such things.

We're at #4 in the charts this week on her 21st week of a decent enough 31 week run. But - this was her second run because she'd previously had a 34 week run and she peaked at #2 in her debut week of the first run and the 14th-16th weeks of the second run. All of which seems a bit odd. The rest of the top five were Mariah Carey, Enigma, Bjork and Meat Loaf with the highest new entry being Pavement (#15).

Wikipedia tells us it's her debut album and that's pretty much your lot except for the random fact that "The Blues Brothers' horn section, Mariah Carey's bass player Anthony Jackson and Cissy Houston's New Hope Baptist Choir" appear on the album. Looking at her entry to pad things out, I see she's a month older than me, she only released two albums (both of which got to #2) and the second life of this album was down to "The Perfect Year" (from Sunset Boulevard) which came out in December '93 and was played everywhere for the new year. Back to the album, Nigel Lowis was very heavily involved in writing, playing, mixing and production - what a talented dude (and he doesn't even get a Wikipedia entry for his sins!). 

Criticially, it actually wasn't that well received getting 5/10 from NME and 2/5 in Select, which feel harsh to me even if I'm not it's biggest fan. Commercially, it didn't do much away from these shores with #19 in The Netherlands being the best it managed anywhere else but it made up for here being #3 in the '93 year-end chart, beaten only by R.E.M. at #2 which I might have guessed and another album at #1 which I would never, ever have guessed (and I think we're going to get to meet in the last week of this year). 

I'm guessing that just means there are a LOT of copies out there because you can pick up a decent copy on discogs.com for a mere fifty pence but you can drop £70 on a sealed copy if you really want to - it feels weird that a sealed copy still exists after all these years. I thought this OK, but not really anything more than that.

13/02/94 - Lovely piano, but challenging lyrics
27/02/94 - OK

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