Hey, Mr. DJ - put a record on
Continuing my trip back through the 2001 album charts.
21/01/01 : Music - Madonna
This is our eleventh visit with Grumpy Auntie Madge taking her clear of The Beatles and Kylie into sixth position on her own - one more and she'll catch up with the mighty Rod Stewart! I seem to recall I listened to this a couple of times and it was OK - but the only thing I remember about it now is that it features her not-entirely-dreadful-but-completely-unnecessary cover of "American Pie" -
Yeah, it opens with the title track and it's not too bad, even if you do get the impression she's trying to be Kylie or Britney (which isn't a bad thing in comparison with some of the other stuff she's done over the years). And most of the other tracks are in a pretty similar vein - it's electronica dancey stuff which slows down towards the end of the album, with some lovely clear production on it. And then she tries to do the same thing with "American Pie" and let's just say it's not the best idea she's had - I'd like to go back on what I said earlier and pronounce that it is, in fact, entirely dreadful. So let's just ignore it completely and say that this is a decent enough album (although slightly less vocoder wouldn't have hurt) - it probably wouldn't have achieved anything if done by someone else but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I also have to say I'd probably be a lot nicer about it if it had come out before Ray Of Light, because for me I'm afraid it just doesn't compare with her (imho) masterpiece.
We're at #9 in the charts this week on her eighteenth week of a not-entirely-deserved 52 week run, with it spending its first two weeks at #1. The top five this week were the Texas best-of (I never knew there was such affection for them, but this is second week at the top), Limp Bizkit, a Beatles best-of, Coldplay and Dido with the highest new entry being Fragma (#19) who are apparently a German vocal trance music group who are still going - this is their only album that's charted but it spent fifteen weeks in the chart.
Wikipedia gives us a quite frankly ridiculous 582 milliPeppers to tell us this is her eighth album and she was feeling the pressure from Britney and Christina to produce something a bit different. The rest of it goes into intricate detail about her thought processes and the millions of people she called on to help her - I tried reading it but found I just didn't care in the slightest. However, I did learn that we have Rupert Everett to blame for "American Pie" - they both starred in The Next Best Thing and he asked her to record it for the soundtrack. Critically, the album was very well received, with plenty declaring it finer than Ray Of Light and retrospective reviews claim it paved the way for lots of artists to do similar things (I'm not entirely convinced by this argument). Commercially, it did way better than I remembered with it getting to #1 almost everywhere, including the US where it sold over three million copies, shifting eleven million units globally.
Unsurprisingly given the huge number of copies out there, discogs.com has this as another fifty pence album, but there are a couple of interesting special releases out there - a special Sainsbury's only (huh?) vinyl reissue from '18 (weird!) which will set you back £175 and a CD version that comes in a black hessian box with a copper title plate which will cost you £250. I'm not tempted in the slightest, but after all the nice things the critics said about this, part of me feels I should relisten to this to see if I missed something - I thought it was decent enough, but nothing to go overboard about.
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