I don't wanna go home - am I losin' control?

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

30/01/26 : How Did I Get Here - Louis Tomlinson

Robbie last week, Louis this - January is obviously the month that ex-boy-band members release albums hoping to get to #1. And (spoiler alert) - it works. Somewhat surprisingly, this is our second visit with solo Louis and last time he was mostly praised for singing in a Northern accent - let's hope he's kept that up!

Well, I have some terrible news for you - the Northern accent has definitely been relegated from front and centre in favour of something more mid-Atlantic. Apart from that, this is actually decent enough - it's Harry-esque summer pop which is pleasant on the ear, without necessarily being particularly memorable. To me, at least although I suspect others may disagree with me - he gets bonus points for the Talking Heads reference though. 

We're at #1 in the charts with a new entry this week and the rest of the top five are Olivia Dean, Megadeth (another new entry), Callum Beattie (and another one) and the Fleetwood Mac best-of. And it's quite the collection of new entries this week, I can tell you.

Megadeth (#3)
I met a Megadeth album back in '94 and found it surprisingly bearable - but this didn't reach those dizzy heights I'm afraid. Decent axe skills, but not a lot more than that for me.

Callum Beattie (#4)
I thought we'd met Callum before, but he's never even had a mention - the only Callum we've ever met was Callum Scott Howells in It's A Sin, so I've no idea who I was thinking of. I didn't mind this though - it's not a million miles away from Louis but slightly more energised. There's no danger of me listening to it again though.

Mika (#14)
We have yet to Mika here, but I know I'm not a fan - he's just all a bit busy-busy and overly clever for my liking. But here, to my surprise, it's also, on first listen, a bit weird and surprisingly boring - maybe I'd get into it if I gave it a chance, but that's not going to be happening. 

The Damned (#23)
The Damned first came to my attention with "Eloise" in '86 - so I was somewhat surprised it's their 27th single, with their debut "New Rose" in '76 being considered by some as the first British punk single. All of which meant my expectations for this were pretty low but I'm not entirely sure they even got to those dizzy heights - let's just say they sound like they're having fun playing a load of covers and leave it at that. 

Poppy (#82)
I'm not aware I've ever heard of Poppy - apparently she first came to prominence on YouTube as an "uncanny valley-like android satirizing Internet culture and modern society" but then she moved into pop and has since shifted to industrial rock. And this is a bit heavy for my liking, but it's certainly well put together and interesting - which is more than most have managed this week. 

The highest re-entry is an interesting one for Fontaines DC (#72) which had a 72 week run in the charts until it dropped out - but two weeks later, it's back! We should also call out Harry Styles (#93) who now has his solo three albums in the chart in anticipation of his fourth coming out soon. Last week, I said that Robbie would be at #23 this week and I'll take #36 as a partial win - I struggle to see Louis doing quite so well, but I think he'll still hang in there so I'm going for #47. And this week's Taylor stats are one in the top ten and five in the entire chart, with Reputation (#87) and Lover (#90) looking to be in danger next week. 

Wikipedia has more text on Louis's offering than I was expecting but all it really tells us is that it's his third solo album - the only other thing of interest is that David Sneddon, the first winner of Fame Academy, is involved in songwriting and keyboards. Critically, it's got pretty decent reviews with almost everyone agreeing it's better than his previous effort and commercially, it's done surprisingly well in Europe, getting to #3 in Australia and Finland, #2 in Germany and Italy and #1 in The Netherlands.

discogs.com tells us that you can pick up a variety of colours of vinyl offerings - clear, white, yellow/orange split or orange/red splatter, which will set you back anything from £17.99 to £52.50 with no obvious reason as to why one would be more expensive than the others. This is a perfectly fine album, but not exactly thrilling (and it doesn't really suit the current weather). Unfortunately, I don't feel I can quite award it the album of the week - I think that has to go to Poppy for her offering, but if you're going to insist on something less harsh or a male voice then I recommend Callum above Louis. 

23/01/26 - More bearable than expected

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