Yo, I ain't seen you in a minute but I got somethin' to tell you

Continuing my trip back through the 2001 album charts.

22/07/01 : 8701 - Usher


It's fair to say I'm not a fan of Usher, which is compounded by the fact that he's made some tracks which are annoyingly catchy so I can't help but admire them.

Well, the "good" news is that there are no admirably catchy tracks on here - it's very average. He so wants to be Stevie Wonder but he so isn't - going "na na naa" with some nice harmonies over some very simple backing tracks does not musical genius make. I also suspect he thinks he's a lyrical genius as well, but I'm afraid "Twork It Out" is not going to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. I can see that if you're looking for some sexy time music then this is going to push some people's buttons, but I just find it annoying - and a whole hour was just way too much.

We're at #2 in the charts this week on his second week of a 32 week run, with it having peaked at #1 in its debut week - it also managed six further runs up to '05, with 59 chart weeks in total. The rest of the top five were Destiny's Child, D12, Travis and Dido and the highest new entry were The Beta Band (#13) - who are another band I always thought I should like but never got into.

Wikipedia has the expected large amount of text (228 milliPeppers) and it tells us it's his third album and he had all sorts of trouble with people leaking tracks to Napster - I read the rest of it but there was absolutely nothing of interest in there. Critically, the reviews were pretty positive with several noting it was a more mature offering than his previous albums. And commercially it did well globally, making the top ten in most countries although the only other place it got to #1 was Canada - it only got to #4 in the US, but somehow still sold five million copies.

discogs.com tells us you're going to have to shell out a quid to get a decent copy, but the most you can spend on it is £20 for the enhanced limited edition double CD - to no-one's surprise, I won't be spending any cash on this. Musically, this isn't dreadful but the general air of smugness that surrounds it just annoys me.

15/07/01 - A very enjoyable revisit
29/07/01 - Much better than expected

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