Santa baby

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

12/12/25 : Kylie Christmas (Fully Wrapped) - Kylie Minogue

Our ninth visit with Kylie, taking her clear of Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young - and, bless her little Australian cotton socks, I struggle to imagine I'm going to like this. 

Woah. I might have struggled to imagine I'd like this but I would never, ever, in a million years, have imagined this could be quite as terrible as it is. Man, it's BAD. It's either well known Xmas songs done not as well as you would expect (she either uses an annoying sex kitten voice or duets with Frank Sinatra or (even worse) Dannii Minogue) or new stuff which is best avoided by everyone ("XMAS", the Amazon "special" is particularly poor and you just know they're going to play it whenever anyone asks Alexa for Christmas songs).

Normally, I'd leave it there, but I feel the need to add another paragraph about exactly how bad this is, OK - maybe not a whole paragraph, but you REALLY need to avoid this. And I say this with, hand on heart, a reasonable opinion of the fragrant Kylie - this is just shocking. There have certainly been albums this year that I wouldn't choose to listen to again - but I'll take any of them over being made to suffer this again.

And so, obviously, we're at #1 with a new entry in the charts this week - but there's some Alexa based shenanigans going on here and no mistake (more on this later). The rest of the top five are Olivia Dean, Sam Fender (up from #34), Taylor Swift and Bublé (now that's how you do an Xmas album!) - and let's have a look a live album heavy list of new entries.

Olivia Rodrigo (#12)
This is her Glasto set which was supposed to be very good, so I would have liked to listen to it - but it's not available on streaming, at least yet (but it probably won't be because it's the BBC recording).

Depeche Mode (#22)
This is a recording of their Memento Mori tour from Mexico City - I listened to the tracks I knew and thought they sounded great, with a very lively crowd. 

The Reytons (#27)
Not a live album, but some very decent indie stuff - although I'm intrigued as to why their last three albums made the top five, but this has struggled to make the top thirty. 

Nick Cave (#33)
This is an live album from the European leg of his Wild God tour, which I was lucky enough to catch at The O2 - great show.

The Happy Mondays (#56)
This is a best-of and they're being SUPER optimistic by putting 17 tracks on it.

We have some very peculiar re-entries this week - the Ultravox best-of (#40) and Geese (#76 - having previously spent one week in the chart in September). Last week I said that EsDeeKid would be at #13 and he's at #16 so I'll take that! Kylie totally deserves to plummet - I feel the season will be undeservedly kind to her, but I have some faith in the people (just don't ask me why!) so I'm going for #40 (don't let me down, people!). And this week's Taylor stats are one in the top ten and a mere three in the entire chart. 

So - what does Wikipedia have to say about this monstrosity? Well, it's actually quite interesting because it tells us it was initially released in '15 (with a slightly different tracklist) and got to #12. It was then re-released in '16 as The Snow Queen version (with 22 tracks) which did absolutely nothing - and then it somehow gets to #1 this year. Hmmm - Alexa is definitely involved. The other thing I'm going to say is that whilst I might have been rude about the duets on this version, I'm frankly terrified by the offerings on the original - she does The Waitresses' "Christmas Wrapping" (which is absolutely one of the best Xmas tracks) with Iggy Pop and (completely bizarrely) Yazoo's "Only You" with James Corden. Part of me wants to listen to them, but a bigger part of me is erring on the side of safety - who knows what might happen... 

I do have to mention discogs.com for this one because you can get a signed version for a mere THREE HUNDRED POUNDS!! But apart from that I think we should just put everyone out of their misery and close the door on this very unfortunate chapter.

05/12/25 - A most peculiar visit






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