Durrrrr duh-duh-duh durrr

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts.

04/07/71 : Love Story Original Soundtrack - Francis Lai

This one is close to being rejected but it seems to be mostly original tracks so let's give it a go - I'm expecting a load of wishy-washy instrumentals (so obviously I can't wait)

Hmmm - well, they are instrumentals (apart from some odd wailing on one of them) but they're not actually not all that wishy-washy. That doesn't mean they're great but they do have the odd catchy bit in them - you'd recognise the main "Theme From Love Story" motif and I have to admit it's a well put together couple of bars. And Francis obviously realised that, because he used it a LOT throughout the album - it's clearly used in three of the tracks (often repeated multiple times played on different instruments) and there are variations of it in two or three others. A lot of the other tracks use repetition as well, so this album basically makes a lot of not very much - it also has far more harpsichord on it than I was expecting. All in all, it's a bit odd and I can assure you you're not missing anything by giving it a swerve.

We're at a relatively high #10 in the charts this week with a re-entry on the start of a six week run, with this being as high as it got. However, that's only half the story because this is the third run out of ten with it having managed 33 weeks in total and two other weeks at #10 in its fourth run. The top five this week were Simon & Garfunkel,, Paul & Linda McCartney, Motown Chartbusters Vol 5, The Rolling Stones and Emerson, Lake & Palmer with there being no new entries in the chart this week, but there were ten other re-entries (for no obvious reason at all).

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for the album, but the film's entry does contain the following detailed sentence - "the soundtrack from the film was released separately as an album, and distributed by Quality Records". What more do you need to know?!? The rest of the entry tells us the film was a big deal - it was nominated for seven Oscars (including best film, director, actor and actress) but only one won and that was for best original score - so well done, Francis!! There's no word on the critical response for the soundtrack (but they were very mixed on the film) - but it did very well commercially, getting to #6 in France, #1 in Italy and Spain and a very decent #2 in the US. 

discogs.com has copies for sale in twelve countries - but none of them are the UK, so you're outta luck if you're desperate to get one over here. But I'll be very surprised if you are - I can't imagine anyone listens to this any further than the theme track these days.

11/07/71 - An enjoyable education experience

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