You can't bribe the door on your way to the sky

Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts.

26/05/17 : Harry Styles - Harry Styles


Our fourth visit with Mr Styles brings us back to where it all started (after it all had ended) - I'm not sure I've ever listened to the album but I suspect I've heard most of it over the years because the lovely Mrs Reed is quite the fan of Harry.

With the benefit of hindsight, this "just" sounds like a Harry Styles album but, given his solo success wasn't a sure thing at the time, I suspect the slightly quirky, downbeat tempo, retro nature of a lot of it was probably quite a bold move. There's no danger of me actively seeking it out again, but I didn't mind it at all because I think it sounds like quite a mature album and there's a decent amount of variety. I also have to admit that I positively like "Sign Of The Times" but I always forget that it's Harry.

We're at #2 in the charts this week on his second week of a 37 week run, which sounds pretty decent but doesn't tell the half of it because he's had a 26 week run in '20, a 24 week run in '21, a 28 week run in '22 and 12 week run in '23. All of which, along with a few other weeks here and there, puts him at 147 weeks in total - which is coincidentally, at the time of writing, exactly the same number as Harry's House. The rest of the top five were Ed Sheeran, Rag'n'Bone Man, Linkin Park (a new entry) and Engelbert Humperdinck (another new entry celebrating 50 years in the business) and the next highest new entry was Erasure (#6). 

Wikipedia has loads on the album (324 milliPeppers) and it tells us it's his debut album after he'd previously been in a boy band called One Direction - apparently they released a few albums but I'm not sure anyone listened to any of them. Considering how much text there is there's remarkably little information there - the whole thing sounds like it was carefully planned and executed, but I'd have been amazed if that wasn't the case. The critics generally liked it and fell over themselves to find interesting ways to describe it - "Britpop", "brash guitar album" and "Los Angeles' style classic rock" are all perfectly nonsense imho. And commercially it did OK, I guess - it only got to #33 in South Korea, #18 in Latvia and #16 in Japan but apart from that it was solid top five material everywhere, including #1 in the US.

discogs.com tells us you're going to have spend a fiver to get a decent copy (which seem relatively high considering how many copies there must be out there) but if you want a 180gm vinyl version then it's going to set you back £40 - I'm not sure too many Harry fans are desperate for 180gm vinyl, but it's there if you want it, I guess. Plenty wanted the album in some form or other though and, despite certainly not being a Harry fan during the 1D days, I have to admit he's forged an interesting path for himself since and I enjoyed seeing where it all started.

02/06/17 - An interesting album

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