I don't like your little games, don't like your tilted stage

Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts.

17/11/17 : reputation - Taylor Swift


Our ninth visit with Taylor and this is one I've already rejected once because I just couldn't face two Taylor albums in a row - but I knew I was only delaying the inevitable. I'm expecting, as always, for this to be perfectly fine but completing mystifying as to why everyone loves it so much.

Hmmm - from my point of view, I don't think I'd actually say this is perfectly fine because I found it quite boring. However, I can see that if you've grown up with Taylor and her "nice" stories of love and break-ups then maybe you feel like there's more to life now and this album kinda tries to move on a bit both musically and thematically (whilst still talking about love and break-ups as well). But as a Taylor-agnostic, I can't say I liked it - I still laughed at "the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now. Why? Oh… 'cos she's dead” though.

We are, of course, at #1 with a new entry in the chart this week on the start of a fifty week run - it's been back for 13 more runs since, the longest of which was 174 weeks ('22-'25) and it's currently on an 11 week run, still hanging in there at #94 making a grand total of 256 weeks. The rest of the top five were Sam Smith, Alfie Boe & Michael Ball, Roy Orbison with the RPO (huh?) and the latest Elton John best-of (a new entry) with the next highest new entry being Shed Seven (#8). It's worth spending a bit more time talking about Elton John's Diamonds because it's been on the chart every week since, so is currently on a 435 week run. It's also rarely been in any danger of dropping out, spending 432 of those weeks in the top 75 with the last time it was out of the top 40 being August '19 - it's currently sitting very pretty at #23. So the lad's doing alright for himself, I suspect.

Back to Taylor, Wikipedia only has a couple of sentences on the album - weird! Oh, hang on, my mistake - there's a massive 672 milliPeppers. I didn't read it all, but it did remind me that she was having a spot of bother at the time (thanks not least to a certain Mr West) and had basically cleared off social media to give everyone a break from her (also, no doubt, to give her a break from everyone). It also reminded me that Right Said Fred got a writing credit on "Look What You Made Me Do" because of similarities with "I'm Too Sexy" - I imagine they did OK out of that. 

Critically, the album was reasonably well reviewed (although some didn't like the production, which I'd agree with) but she got a surprising amount of shit off people for not engaging either politically around Donald Trump or feministically (is that a word?) around #MeToo - although some people praised her for claiming her right to silence. Commercially, it did OK I guess, although it only got to #16 in France and #36 in South Korea - it went multi-platinum everywhere else.

discogs.com tells us it's quite an expensive album because you're going to have to spend £15 to get a copy (I suspect most Taylor fans don't let them go easily) but if you want the VIP tour package box set then it's going to set you back £699.99 - making this the most expensive album of the year so far. But, however much it costs, it's not an album for me, I'm afraid.

10/11/17 - Could have been a lot worse
24/11/17 - Pretty decent

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