It's a lesson too late for the learning

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts.

16/05/71 : Over And Over - Nana Mouskouri

Yes, it's probably our third covers album in a row, but Nana is someone who's been mentioned a surprising number of times over the years and the only time we've actually met her was a track on the somewhat bizarre All Star Festival so it only seems fair to give her a shout - giving us three women in a row!

Hmmm. Well, I can't say I loved it - but I'm also hard pushed to say what exactly is wrong with it. She's got a nice voice and she's singing some nice songs (and quite possibly introducing them to her audience). Yes, it's a bit over-the-top at times, but not massively so - and I suspect a lot of people that listened to it liked things a bit over-the-top (but certainly not too much!). I was pleased to meet her properly, but I'll not be rushing back to it - and that's all I've got to say on the matter really.

We're at #15 in the charts this week on her fourth week of a fourteen week run, which seems pretty reasonable - but it's only a tiny part of the story! Because this is her seventh run, out of TWENTY between '69 and '74 which gave her a total of 97 weeks in the chart with a run of 26 weeks in '70 and 20 weeks in '70/'71 and it peaked at #10 in December '70. Way to go, Nana! The top five this week were The Rolling Stones, Motown Chartbusters Vol 5, Simon & Garfunkel, Andy Williams and Leonard Cohen, with the highest new entry being a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young live album (#8).

Wikipedia tells us this is her third "notable" album - but her entry tells us she's released something like 450 of them throughout her career (with the last being released in '24) so it's probably not that surprising that there isn't an entry for it. Apparently she's recorded in at least thirteen languages including Greek, French, English, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Hebrew, Welsh, Mandarin Chinese and Corsican - she's released her biggest hit, "Je Chante Avec Toi Liberté", has been released in five languages alone. It also looks we'll probably meet her again because she had a #3 album in '76.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, discogs.com tells us this isn't exactly much sought after these days - you can spend £1.87-£6.80 on it. And that seems fair enough to me (particularly because I suspect there are a million best-ofs out there) - there's nothing really wrong with this, but it's not something anyone actually needs.

23/05/71 - An interesting educational experience

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