Girl, we're gonna send you someone to love

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts.

19/09/71 : Everything Is Everything - Diana Ross

Our fourth visit with Diana and our second in a week - and I'm hoping this is slightly better than her last offering.

Yeah, I think it's better without being exactly great - the production doesn't sound quite so shoddy, but there's still a load of pointless cover versions. And some of them are really quite peculiar - she absolutely murders "(They Long to Be) Close to You" and doesn't do a lot better with "The Long And Winding Road" - somewhat surprisingly she does a much better job with another Lennon/McCartney composition "Come Together", which doesn't feel like it would suit her at all. It was a bit weird to hear "I'm Still Waiting" after we had on our previous visit and I also have to ask who thought it was a good idea to call a track "Doobedood'ndoobe, Doobedood'ndoobe, Doobedood'ndoo". Overall I think this just about scrapes by as listenable, without really possessing anything to drag you back.

We're all the way down at #31 in the charts this week on her third of three single week runs, with this being as high as it got. And boy did we have to skip over some dross to get there - two each of Mantovani, Geoff Love, Jim Reeves and Andy Williams compilations were avoided for your pleasure. The top five this week were Deep Purple, Rod Stewart, The Who, Simon & Garfunkel and The Moody Blues (even if I haven't exactly loved all of them, I have to admit the cream is rising to the top there) and the highest new entry was a Lulu compilation (#15).

Wikipedia tells us this is her second solo album and, to no-one's surprise, it was a bit of a rush-job, coming out only five months after her debut - given she's still hanging around, it feels weird that they were obviously a bit concerned about her potential longevity in the early days! And that's about your lot really - there's no word about the critical reception at the time, but retrospectively AllMusic quite liked it however Robert Christgau did not. And commercially, it only got to #42 in the US, which must have worried then because her debut got to #19.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up an original copy for £3 - somewhat surprisingly the most you can spend on it is £50 for a limited edition Japanese CD reissue from '12. I struggle to imagine too many people consider any of this to be the pinnacle of Diana's solo career - it's really remarkably average.

26/09/71 - Surprisingly enjoyable

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