When the time grew near, for me to show my love

Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts.

16/01/94 : Everything Changes - Take That


For a band that feel to be the bane of my life, this is only our fourth visit with the lads and our first in two years - so maybe I'll be nice to them?

Starting on a nice enough note, I actually don't mind "Pray", but "Relight My Fire" still gets on my nerves - apart from that, I found a lot of it quite boring, except for "Babe" where they go properly over the top in quite an amusing fashion (unintentionally, I suspect). Maybe I'm just getting old and realise there are more important things in life than being annoyed by Take That - ah, I'm going to miss them. I would say some of the singing is surprising ropey - you really think they'd have had lessons by this time. If you want this in your life, then you're welcome to it but I remain mystified as to the appeal. Don't they look soooo young on the cover though - awww, bless!

We're at #6 in the charts this week on their fourteenth week of an impressive 71 week run with it peaking at #1 in its debut and twelfth week. The top five this week were a Diana Ross best-of, Dina Carroll, a Bryan Adams best-of, Bjork and M People with the highest new entry being Blind Melon (#53).

Wikipedia has surprisingly little on the album and it tells us it's their second album - one thing I'm not sure I ever knew is that "Relight My Fire" is a cover, with the original being done by Dan Hartman in '79 - it's a disco banger. Pretty much everything else in the entry is about how well received it was - even critically, with Smash Hits (the ultimate judge of cultural excellence) giving it 5*. But it did better commercially, being the fourth best selling album in the UK in '93 (despite only coming out in October) and it made the top ten in most European countries, even winning over the notoriously angry Finns to get to #2.

Unsurprisingly, you're not going to have to splash out to get a copy, with discogs.com offering you a decent version for 75 pence, but if you're desperate for an sealed Taiwanese pressing (and who isn't?) then you're going to have spend 75 quid. I feel I can probably resist because, for the most part, I think this is bang average and surprisingly ropey in places - but other opinions were certainly available in '94.

09/01/94 - Quite the thing
23/01/94 - Better than I remembered

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