You've been saying I'm driving you crazy

Continuing my trip back through the 2001 album charts.

22/04/01 : Popstars - Hear'say


Well, it will be interesting to see how this stood the test of time! And let's just leave it there for the time being.

Actually, "Pure And Simple" isn't dreadful - it's very S Club and bounces along acceptably. And for the most part, the rest of the album tries to do the same, but falls somewhat short - it's all very forgettable in a SAW kinda way. However, the cover versions are an exception because they absolutely MURDER The Mamas & The Papas' "Monday Monday" and Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" - they're impressively bad. The only other thing I took away is that the ladies have such obviously better voices than the lads that you wonder whether this was an artistic choice - it's all quite bizarre.

We're at #2 in the charts this week on their third week of a pretty undeserved 25 week run with it having spent its first two weeks at a thoroughly undeserved #1. The rest of the top five were Stereophonics, Dido, Emma Bunton (a new entry - it would be interested to see how that compares with this album) and Eva Cassidy with the next highest new entry being The Avalanches (#7), which is quite an interesting album (and infinitely better than Hear'Say). 

Wikipedia tells us this is their debut album, rushed out after the completion of the reality TV show of the same name - and that's about your lot for content of interest. I checked out their entry in a valiant attempt to solve one of the great grammatical mysteries of our time (why is that apostrophe there?) but it drew a blank - the best Google AI can come up with is that it was either a design choice (Suzanne said "it looked good on paper") or required for legal reasons (Hearsay possibly already existed). I did see from their entry that the band split in '03 citing "abuse from the public" as the main reason - I'm afraid I had a little chuckle at that. Back to the album, it got a bit of a mauling with The Times saying "As soon as the album ends, you'd still be hard pushed to remember how more than three of the songs sound. The real question is, how much do you care?" but commercially they had the last laugh because at the time this was the fastest selling debut album ever here - it also bizarrely got to #1 in New Zealand.

discogs.com tells us we've reached a new low because this is a 25 pence album but you can spend 11 quid on a mint copy if you really feel the need. For the most part, this album is merely rubbish - but whilst "Pure And Simple" rises above the rest, those cover versions impressively drag down the quality average.

15/04/01 - Perfectly pleasant
29/04/01 - Not great


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