When the world leaves you feeling blue - you can count on me, I will be there for you

Completing my trip back through the 2001 album charts.

07/01/01 : 7 - S Club 7


And we complete our trip through the year with our third second visit - interestingly all of them have involved one album in January and one in December. My verdict the last time I met this lot was that it was fine enough cheese in small doses, but a whole album was too much. I'll be amazed if things differ here, but at least we've got "Reach" to enjoy.

Yeah, it's the opening track so they knew that had something relatively special there - I also didn't mind "Never Had A Dream Come True" and was quite surprised they didn't murder Stevie Wonder's "Lately". Whilst the rest of the album is most definitely cheesy, I enjoyed this more than the previous visit - there feels to be more variety here and the songs seem to suit their voices better. Don't get me wrong, I'm not declaring this a misunderstood work of musical genius, but it's certainly bearable - it's also eight minutes shorter than our previous visit, so that helps!

We're at #7 in the charts this week on their fifth week of a 37 week run, which sounds pretty decent but it's only half the story because it had a previous run of 24 weeks where it debuted at #1 - for no obvious reason it then took a couple of weeks off before coming back! The top five this week were The Beatles, Coldplay, Eminem, Robbie Williams and Madonna which is quite the high powered mix of artists and the highest new entry was Linkin Park, all the way down at #81 but about to start a 77 week run.

Wikipedia tells us this is their second album and spends most of the rest of the time telling us about their charitable exploits - apparently they launched the Poppy Appeal in '00 alongside Dame Thora Hird, which is quite the combination. To pad things out, I investigated the entry for "Never Had A Dream Come True" and was surprised to see it got to #10 in the US, but was even more surprised to learn there's an S Club 7 film which sounds amusingly nonsensical with the plot involving a mad scientist cloning them and other "famous" people. It's also "notable" as the movie debut of Gareth Gates, who gets to play - go on guess. Yup, a Gareth Gates clone! Back to the album, it wasn't particularly well received critically, but did surprisingly well commercially elsewhere getting to #10 in Ireland and #69 in the US.

discogs.com doesn't let us down, finishing the year on another fifty pence album but if you want the vinyl picture disc it's going to set you back £30.99. I suspect I can resist that, but there were plenty of albums throughout the year which were worse than this (not least the other S Club 7 offering). And with that 2001 is over - except for the inevitable write-up of the year, obviously...

14/01/01 - A partial win

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

And all at once I owned the earth and sky

Image
A new year to start the New Year - starting my trip back through the 2001 album charts. 30/12/01 : Swing When You're Winning -   Robbie Williams There's a reasonable argument I should reject this album, but it was such a surprising cultural moment that even I don't feel I can, so it means we're starting the year with one that "we" own. This is our fifth visit with Mr Williams - I'm determined not to enjoy it, but I also have to admit I'm not going to hate it nearly as much as I would like to.  You know what? This is perfectly fine. Completely inessential, but he's not doing anyone any harm. For the most part, it's classic Sinatra-or-thereabouts tracks which Robbie does a decent job with on the vocals (along with some slightly peculiar guests) and they've obviously got some decent musicians in to lay down the backing tracks. He rarely does anything wildly original with them but, most importantly, he doesn't ruin them either - I don't...
Read more

I wanna keep the door from closing, yeah

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 26/12/25 : I Barely Know Her - Sombr Christmas week gives us some odd albums - last year we had Lana del Rey's album from '12, which hasn't left the chart all year. I'm pleased to say we're somewhat more up to date this year with an album that came out in August - I met it as a new entry  and was somewhat nonplussed by it, but I have mentioned it a couple of times since because it's just not gone away, which is somewhat unusual. So let's see what I make of it on a second listen (this trick totally failed to convince me of the virtues of Addison Rae earlier today). Well, well, well - Sombr at least intrigues on second listen. I'd struggle to describe it - it's kinda poppy indie with a woozy vibe to it, but it feels like it has depths to it and I reckon the more you listen to it, the more you pick up on. Intriguing indeed - I'd love to tell you more but that's all I got for the time ...
Read more

Ciara, be nice, and you wear too much foundation

Image
Continuing my trip up The Guardian's  50 best albums of 2025 . #2 :  EURO-COUNTRY - CMAT Despite its fraught creation, CMAT’s third album sounds like the supremely assured work of a songwriter whose powers have reached a new peak. It is, by turns, poignant, moving, furiously angry, uproariously funny and packed with incredible tunes. It strides confidently away from the country-infused style she minted on her 2022 debut If My Wife New I’d Be Dead – into territory that variously touches on jazz (Janis Joplining), raging alt-rock (The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station), soul-kissed pop (Running/Planning; Take a Sexy Picture of Me) – without in any way losing the essence of what made her successful in the first place. The 24th album I've previously heard and when I met this as a new entry (in the same week I met Sabrina Carpenter and Blood Orange  which also made this list), I described it as "interestingly cryptic" so it will be intriguing to see what I make of it on a seco...
Read more