Guess I should say thank you for the "hate you"s and the tattoos

Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts.

03/02/17 : Glory Days - Little Mix


Our fourth visit with them Mixers and I've generally been positive about their output - and I've no reason to imagine that will change here. 

It opens with "Shout Out To My Ex" (which is totally not about Zayn, obviously) and "Touch" which were strong singles - "Power" was the only other track I recognised, but the rest of the album continues with a similar female power/solidarity message presented in a well-done, radio-friendly manner, with enough variety across the album to stop it getting too repetitive. Like many albums we've seen on the list, it's really not aimed at me - but as a girl parent, there are far worse things they could have been listening to. 

We're at #3 in the charts this week on their eleventh week on the start of an impressive 133 week run with it having peaked at #1 in weeks 1-2 and 6-8 and it was back again several times in '19 and '20, spending 173 weeks in total in the chart - well done to the lasses! The rest of the top five were La La Land, Pete Tong & The Heritage Orchestra (skipped because it's a compilation, but it's a classical house compilation with some decent arrangements on it), Ed Sheeran and Deaf Havana (a new entry from a band I don't remember in the slightest, but apparently they're still going). And the next highest new entry is from Lucy Spraggan (#12), the X Factor escapee.

Wikipedia has a surprising amount of text in there (261 milliPeppers), but a surprising amount of that gives us the track listings for EIGHT different versions of the album. What it does tell us is this is their fourth album and they used EIGHTEEN producers across the album - "Nothing Else Matters" alone had five different people involved! Critically, the album was well reviewed but there were a load of three star ratings in a "it's good for what it is" kinda way - fair play to The Guardian for going four stars (I don't know if you've noticed, but they can be a bit sniffy about things). It also did well in the awards season, with "Shout Out To My Ex" winning the Brit Award for Best British Single (and also the slightly more niche Radio Music Award for Best Break-up Song!). Commercially, it did best here, being their first #1 album and certified at over a million units - madly, that made them only the eighth girl group in history to get to the top. It also got to #1 in Ireland and #2 in Australia - it charted across most of Europe in the top thirty and also got to #25 in the US. 

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a CD for as little as £1.50 (there are a LOT of copies out there) but if you want the sealed translucent neon pink vinyl complete with poster then it's going to set you back £85. There was a lot to admire about Little Mix and this is a decent showing from the lasses, if not something I'm ever going to go back to. 

27/01/17 - Considerably better than expected
10/02/17 - A nice memory jogger

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