In life, you gotta find your feet

Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts.

24/02/17 : Under Stars - Amy McDonald


Our second proper visit with Amy, but I also skimmed one of her albums as a new entry and both times KT Tunstall was mentioned, so I can't see I'm going to have any problems with this.

Yeah, we've not strayed far away from such territory. She's got a decent enough voice and they're decent enough songs with a decent enough amount of variety - but I'm not sure I'd describe any of it as stellar. It's all perfectly listenable though.

We're at #2 with a new entry in the charts this week on the start of a decent enough nine week run. This was her second consecutive to just miss out on the top spot - fortunately, her debut album did make it there though. The rest of the top five were Rag'n'Bone Man (his second week at #1, which was then followed by 21 weeks in the top five), Ryan Adams (a new entry - his most successful and yet currently his last charting album), Ed Sheeran and Adele with the next highest new entry being Future (#16) which is a bit peculiar because he was mentioned in the same vein on my last post (and yes, apparently he released two albums a week apart).

Wikipedia tells us it's her fourth album and there are some songs on it - and that's about it. It does tell us that "Leap Of Faith" was about Scottish independence, although it seems odd that another track on the album is called "Prepare To Fall", which isn't such a positive spin on matters - but she then follows that with "From The Ashes" so she's got all bases covered. Critically, people were, like me, nice enough about it without going overboard - The Evening Standard got it right for me with "a tuneful collection that doesn't mess with the formula". Commercially though, it did better than I expected, particularly in central Europe, with it getting to #4 in Austria, #2 in Germany and #1 in Switzerland.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent CD version for four quid but you do have the option to spend £70 on a vinyl copy if you really feel the need. I think I'm fine though because this album has done nothing to change my opinion from previous visits with Amy - she writes nice songs which are all perfectly listenable, but she's not about to set the world alight.

03/03/17 - Not great, but it does what's asked of it

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