Another year, one more beer, another song

Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts.

06/10/17 : Now - Shania Twain


Our third visit with Shania - I've no reason to imagine this won't be bearable. but I've also very few reasons to imagine I'll love it. 

Hmmm. Well, I didn't hate it - but...

...it doesn't really sound like Shania Twain, which isn't really a problem for me personally - but I can see that some people who bought it because it's a Shania Twain album might have been a bit annoyed. And, at absolutely no point is it absurdly catchy - again, not a huge problem for me, except that I'm left wondering why anyone would care about this. It's just, well, boring - yeah, pretty tuneful and not dreadful, but boring.

We're at (quite obviously) #1 with a new entry in the charts this week on the start of a seven week run which featured a drop in every week. The rest of the top five was a new entry heavy selection of Wolf Alice (another new entry), David Gilmour (ditto), Ed Sheeran (obviously not a new entry) and Demi Lovato (but this one is). And things didn't stop there with more new entries for Miley Cyrus (#8), Michael Jackson (#9), Feeder (#10), Chris Rea (#11) and Benny Andersson (#12) - which is quite the mix and no mistake!

Wikipedia tells us it's her fifth album and her first in fifteen years - and quite the emotional rollercoaster of a time that was too, with her somewhat crazy divorce (when she found out her husband and best friend had been getting it on), her remarriage (to her ex best friend's ex husband) and her singing voice being weakened by Lyme disease and dysphonia (which seems to be another word for not being able to sing), requiring a whole load of therapy (hence it not sounding like her, I guess). But apart from that, there's remarkably little of interest here. Critically, most people liked the production but weren't so convinced by her vocals, but commercially it did very well getting to #1 in Australia, Canada and the US.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent version for a couple of quid, but if you want the deluxe double vinyl release it's going to set you back the princely sum of £44.48. Tbh though I really struggle to see who would be prepared to pay anything for this - it's perfectly listenable, but I'd just don't see it's as advertised on the cover.

13/10/17 - Not for me

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