Sometimes I get to thinking while you are far away

Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts.

23/01/94 : Elegant Slumming - M People


Another one we own (fourteen for the year) and I seem to recall I didn't mind it, even if her voice did get a bit annoying after a time.

It opens with "One Night In Heaven" and "Moving On Up" which are very decent tracks - and the rest of the album isn't far off it in terms of quality. Also, I actually didn't find her voice too annoying because there's a decent amount of musical noodlery going on without her - if anything, I'd say it gets a bit too noodle-ish at times, but I reckon they just about get away with it. Overall, I'd say this grooves nicely - it was less dinner party-ish than I was remembered. 

We're at #6 in the charts this week on their sixteenth week of an impressive 73 week run, with it having peaked at #2 in its debut week - kept off the top by, quite obviously, Meat Loaf. The top five this week were Chaka Demus & Pliers (a rare re-entry at #1 - their cover of "Twist And Shout" was responsible), a Diana Ross best-of, Dina Carroll, a Bryan Adams best-of and Bjork with the highest new entry being Richard Thompson (#23).

Wikipedia tells us it's their second album and has a reasonable amount of text which somehow conspires to tell us absolutely nothing - the only thing I learned is that Heather Small didn't contribute to the songwriting, with Mike Pickering and Paul Heard doing all the work except on "Don't Look Any Further" which was a cover. Mike is quite an interesting character - before M People, he was a DJ at The Hacienda and worked at Factory Records where he signed The Happy Mondays and James (amongst others) and after M People, he worked in A&R for Sony for 20 years. This album was very well received critically with NME giving it 7/10, our old mate Robert Christgau giving it an A and it won the Mercury Music Prize. Commercially, it did well across Europe and got to #1 in the New Zealand, but didn't manage to crack the US. 

discogs.com tells us there must be a load of copies out there because you can pick up a decent version for fifty pence but if you want a version with an inner sleeve then you're gonna need to shell out £139.99! That's gotta be one pretty special inner sleeve, but I think the album stands up pretty well even without that - I enjoyed this more than I remembered doing so. 

16/01/94 - Just a bit boring really

30/01/94 - You can't begrudge them their moment in the spotlight

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