I might empty my bank account and buy that boy with a pipe

Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts.

07/07/17 : Funk Wav Bounces Vol 1 - Calvin Harris


Our second visit with Calvin and the previous one was FWB Vol 2, which I was somewhat nonplussed by ("something to put on at a bbq which no-one will object to") so I can't say my expectations are particularly high.

Nope - for the most part this is bang average. It just feels like he's playing around with Garageband (or whatever the cool kids use these days) and throwing in the odd weird sound to keep it "interesting", whilst his mates provide the vocals. The only exception is "Feels" which I have to admit is pretty catchy (and was on the radio all the bloody time in this summer) but if you actually listen to the track then you soon notice how little content there actually is there. There are some Calvin Harris albums out there that I'm looking forward to listening to, but this smacks of someone whose creative juices are running somewhat low.

We're at #2 in the charts with a new entry this week on the start of a thirteen week run - far more than it deserved, but I guess "Feels" did the trick for him. The rest of the top five were Ed Sheeran (of course), Rag'n'Bone Man, Royal Blood and Stone Sour (a new entry that I don't remember in the slightest, but I very much doubt I'd like) and the next highest new entry was TLC (#40 - which seems low, but it was 15 years after their previous album).

Wikipedia tells us this is his fifth album and is his first one that he doesn't provide vocals on. However, it's not like he needed to because he had guest appearances from Frank Ocean, Pharrell Williams, Ariana Grande (who I found surprisingly enjoyable), Future, Khalid, Travis Scott, Snoop Dogg, John Legend, Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, Big Sean and Lil Yachty. Critically, people were surprisingly nice about it and it made quite a few year-end lists but The Independent got it right for me with "it's a typical contacts-book R&B exercise, with an impressive cast of guests on a fairly underwhelming series of grooves". Commercially, it did pretty well globally, getting to #1 in the completely obvious combination of Canada (happy country!) and Finland (sad country!) and #2 in the US. However, somewhat peculiarly, it's appeared on the US Top Dance/Electronic Albums year-end list every year from '17-'25 - I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would listen to this multiple times, let alone for multiple years. 

discogs.com tells us that you can pick up a decent copy for a couple of quid but if you want the double 180gm vinyl version it's going to set you back TWO HUNDRED QUID!!! Errrr, no - on pretty much all fronts, I'm afraid. It was all quite mystifying.

14/07/17 - Possibly style over substance?

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