As I walk along these streets I see a man that walks alone

Continuing my trip back through the 2001 album charts.

26/08/01 : Break The Cycle - Staind


This is only our third mention of Staind on this blog - and the other two mentions have been the two previous posts because it was in the top five. And I don't really know anything about them - I believe they are heavy-ish rock types, but whether I like them will depend on how heavy they are. They've got to be better than Slipknot though, right?

Oh yes, better than Slipknot - high praise indeed! This is actually decent enough - I was reminded of Live or Nickelback, with a decent combination of slower, more melodic and faster, rockier sections. It's not surprisingly anyone with its musical genius but it's something to rock out to if you're in the mood for some mild rocking. I can't say I'm likely to head back to it, but I'd have no problems if I found myself there.

Despite my nice words, I do have to admit to being surprised to find ourselves at #1 in the chart this week on their third week of a 31 week run - somewhat peculiarly, its first three weeks' chart placing were #93, #83 and then, suddenly, #1. The rest of the top five were David Gray, Nelly Furtado, a Prince best-of and Atomic Kitten with the next highest new entry being, quite obviously, a Marvin Gaye best-of (#15) - he'd only been dead for 17 years at this point.

Wikipedia tells us this is their third album, but the one that got things going for them - and that's pretty much all it's got for you, other than telling us the recording budget for the album was $800k, which seems peculiar given how little their first two albums did. But it worked out well enough for everyone because they're still going and up to seven albums now. Critically, the reviews were "meh" at best (2 stars in Kerrang!, 2/10 in NME) but that doesn't overly surprise me because it doesn't feel like an album made for the critics - but did the public like it? Well, they very much did, with it getting to #1 in Canada (it feels very Canadian), New Zealand, Ireland and the US - only #18 in Australia though, which seems an odd exception for the English speaking countries. It's gone down particularly well in the US, selling five million copies and it was the 56th best selling album of the decade - which just seems mad, because it's listenable but it's not THAT great!

discogs.com tells us that this is a two quid album which feels particularly odd when you see that the most expensive one is £7.32 - there's no danger of me spending any cash on it, but I'm glad I listened to it and it was perfectly listenable - if mysteriously popular.

02/09/01 - I really didn't like this

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