Try as I may, I can never explain what I hear when you don't say a thing

Continuing my trip back through the 2001 album charts.

06/05/01 : Ronan - Ronan Keating


It's easy to be rude about Ronan (and I'm sure I will be) but I have to admit to liking "When You Say Nothing At All" so I'm going in with more of an open mind than I might otherwise have done - I suspect a whole album may be a bit too much for me though (and undoubtedly struggle to maintain that level of quality).

Ah, it's not terrible if you like that sort of thing. He does go a bit heavy on the Oirish tin whistle and fiddle in places but none of the songs are dreadful, although it wouldn't have hurt to have a bit more variety across the album. I think my biggest complaint is that he sings the whole thing as though he's sixty years old looking back on a life full of lost loves and missed opportunities, hoping for one last chance of happiness. But the boy was 23 at the time and he'd just got married and had his first kid - you'd think he could sound a bit happier about the whole thing.

We're at #6 in the charts this week on his 40th week of a 53 week run with it having peaked at #1 in its first two weeks (it pleasingly started 1-1-2-2-3-3). The top five this week were Destiny's Child (a new entry), Dido, Stereophonics, Shaggy and Gabrielle and the next highest new entry was Orbital (#11 - and I don't think I've ever listened to this). 

Wikipedia tells us this is his debut album and he released some singles from it - and that's your lot. So let's take a deeper dive into "When You Say Nothing At All" - I knew it was a cover but I couldn't have told you it was originally done by Keith Whitley (it's OK, but a bit too country for me) and has also been done by Alison Krauss & Union Station (not bad either, but I think I like Ronan's best). Ronan's version was done for the soundtrack for Notting Hill and got to #1 - he's also done a Spanglish version with Paulina Rubio, which I'm not sure anyone was crying out for. Back to album, the critics were pretty down on it with quite a few complaints about the number of ballads present but commercially it did well in Europe and particularly in Scandinavia, getting to #1 in Denmark and Norway - amazingly, it only got to #2 in Ireland. 

discogs.com tells us that in a year of cheap albums, this surpasses them all by being a thirty pence album but you can spend £38.99 on the red and silver vinyl double album 25th anniversary release if you really want to. And I can imagine that some people will want to do so, but I will not be one of them.

13/05/01 - Decent enough

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