I need the whole stadium to jump

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

27/03/26 : Arirang - BTS 

How do BTS let you know that one of One Direction called? Yup - Arirang....

I've met the lads a couple of times and found them interesting without being a-maze-ing - but let's see what we're got here after their recent hiatus.

Hmmm. Yeah, I guess it's interesting in parts but the first half just sounded like some people who've been away and they wanna stay down with the kids. But I, probably to your surprise, am not down with the kids so I get it was all just a bit try-hard and not that great as a a result. And the second half was just wishy-washy and boring - I didn't hate it, but I really didn't love it either.

We are, somewhat to my surprise, at #1 in the charts this week with a new entry - do that many people over here really love them that much? (I guess the answer is - yes, they do). The rest of the top five are Harry Styles, Olivia Dean (her first time out of the top two in twenty weeks), Luke Combs (a new entry) and the Fleetwood Mac best-of (its 17th consecutive week in the top ten - how is this doing quite so well?). It's a quiet week for new entries this week though...

Luke Combs (#4)
I know he's a highly regarded US country artist but I'm not aware I've ever heard anything from him (he's only ever been mentioned four times) - I tend to either like stuff in this genre or find it generically annoying. And I actually quite liked this - yes, it draws on most of the usual topics but there's more variety across the album than I was expecting and some of the songs are really quite gorgeous. I'm specifically going to call out "15 Minutes" which is about someone ringing his mum from prison and "Giving Her Away" which is written from the point of a groom to his soon-to-be father-in-law and has some lovely lyrics to it (and I will ban anyone from playing it to me if either of mine get married because it will totally set me off).

Jane McDonald (#10)
I am aware of Jane but don't really know a lot about her - the little I do know being that she is very popular in certain circles and I have no comprehension as to how that's happened. And I can assure you that nothing here has increased my level of understanding - it's all annoyingly upbeat and well, really not very good.

The highest re-entry is Gunna (#87) - I'm somewhat surprised that's spent fifteen weeks on the charts, but there's nothing else of note about it. It was nice to see the Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler best-ofs back and next to each other again though (#97 and #98). Last week I said that James Blake would hang in at #47 and unfortunately I'm completely wrong because he's nowhere to be seen - I struggle to imagine BTS are going to disappear, but I've got no idea where they'll end up so let's randomly guess #16. And this week's Taylor stats are one in the top thirty and a mere three in the entire chart - she's officially lost it, I tell you!

Wikipedia tells us this is their tenth album (and their sixth Korean language one). The only fact of interest is that the album is indeed in two halves - a hip-hop half (the try-hard bit) and a pop half (the wishy-washy bit) but they're separated by "No. 29", which is a field recording of the Bell of King Seongdeok, which is the largest extant bronze bell in Korea and the 29th national treasure of Korea (there are currently 348 designated national treasures). Critically, the album was pretty well received and commercially it's done very well, getting to #1 in most places - on the day of release, the fourteen tracks occupied the top fourteen spots on Spotify's global chart (yes, even the field recording of the bell).

discogs.com tells us that you can spend £28 on a boring old CD version or you can spend £38-£43 on various differently coloured vinyl copies featuring photos of band members on the cover (Jin's pink one is the cheapest, with J-Hope's cream one being the most expensive). I guess this album is giving the people what they wanted, but I struggle to see the appeal personally - it is at least better than the Jane McDonald monstrosity, but Luke Combs is easily the winner of the album of the week award for me.

20/03/26 - Some interesting sounds

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