A Tender Victory

Today I was listening to the number 20 album on the Guardian’s top 50 albums of 2023, ‘Dreamer’ by Nabihah Iqbal.

This is totally Guardian music. Beautiful for lift music…almost instrumental with some breathy vocals over the top.

Not only did I dislike this album but my car hated it so much that it kept disconnecting from the bluetooth while it was on. It did not disconnect when I was listened to the Taskmaster podcast or when I was listening to the Audible of ‘The Eyre Affair’ by Jasper Fforde.

Crave

Today I listened to the album ‘This is Why’ by Paramore which is number 21 on the Guardian’s list of 50 best albums of 2023.

I listened to this album in 2023 and wrote about it here.

Last year, when I listened to this album I said that I understood why ‘Misery Business’ was problematic. I’ve decided that I don’t understand. I mean, yes, it’s not great to call someone a ‘wh*re’ and if you only consider the song lyrics then perhaps, it’s a problem….but, there was a music video and I think everything that horrible woman did was worse than Paramore calling her a ‘wh*re’. And I don’t believe that anyone who can listen to that song without watching the video in their minds, shouldn’t get a vote on the appropriateness of the song.

Secondly, Hayley Paramore (yes, that’s her real name¹). Why is her voice so squeaky? It wasn’t squeaky in Misery Business. It’s so squeaky! Also, I can hear male voices on this album? No! they are for music only! Not voices.

1. It’s not her real name. ↩︎

So You Are Tired?

Today I was back in 2023 listened to one of the top 50 albums of 2023 according to the Guardian.

Sufjan Stevens 10th album ‘Javelin’ came in at number 22 according to the Guardian.

And the Guardian continue to enjoy the slow calming music you’d find in a lift.

There was nothing offensive about this album but it’s ultimately forgettable unless you write for Guardian music.

Bad Luck

Today I was back in 2021 which really did surprise me because I thought I was listening to a 2024 album. It turns out that the current number 70 album is Noah Kahan’s 2021 album ‘I was/I am’.

I’ve listened to Noah Kahan before on the blog here. Stick Season was his 2022 album which was at number 3 on the chart when I listened to it. And here we are with ‘I was/I am’ is his 2021 entering the UK album chart for the first time. Where will it reach over the next few years? Noah Kahan is the king of moving up the chart.

This album was very pop whereas ‘Stick Season’ was far more folk.

My favourite song was Bad Luck. I listened to this album 3 times today and everytime this song turned up I though he was saying he was a bad duck. And I’ve met some bad ducks so I felt like I understood the metaphor but no, it wasn’t a metaphors…he’s just bad luck.

Could You Help Me?

Today I thought I was going to listen to the David Bowie album ‘Waiting in the Stars’ but it seems that this was released for Record Day and so can’t be found on Alexa just yet. Even fully on record it’s number 39 in the album charts.

So, instead I listened to the current number 62 album ‘This Ain’t the Way You Go Out’ by Lucy Rose.

I have not listened to Lucy Rose on the blog before.

I think I liked this album. It was quiet and a bit of a lullaby but I think I liked it.

This album was inspired by Lucy Rose’s pregnancy and I believe it explains why there is an interlude of baby noises. You know I don’t like an interlude. And baby noises randomly in the middle of an album is slightly scary!

Its 12 tracks long which as we know is the perfect amount of tracks. It was just under 40 minutes long which is too short but it felt like a complete album.

Red Red Wine

Today I listened to the current number 5 album ‘UB45’ by UB40. This is a studio album comprising of 7 new tracks and 7 re-recordings of classic UB40 tracks….Interestingly, they did not include ‘1 in 10’ which I believe is their best/most political song but did include ‘Tyler’ which is very political and updated to 40 years instead of 5 years.

The chart this week is full of album that I don’t allow on the blog. This UB40 album only just made the cut but honestly, can you trust anyone who doesn’t like UB40? I mean, yes, because I have disliked a UB40 album here and listened to another one here.

The albums that I won’t be listening to (other than Taylor Swift which I explained yesterday) include Bruce Springsteen (best of album); The 1975 (a Live album…and also ’cause I hate them); and When Rivers Meet (Live album… I don’t think I’ve heard of ‘When Rivers Meet’ to be honest).

This means that there is potential 2 or 3 albums that I will be listening to this week that are on the current chart. This means, either I’ll be back to Top 50 Guardian albums of 2023 or I might listen to some of the new entries from last week…

It’s weird right? That everyone thought last week was the best week to release new music? So much so that this week has so little new music in it?

I mean, todays album is only 50% new and it’s number 5 and I’m writing about it.

Scared of Fear

Taylor Swift is at number one in the album charts. I’m sure it’s a great pop album and is very encouraging to many people. I didn’t listen to it. I can’t be coping with Taylor Swift. I would think that in a normal album chart week but I think it even more so this week because number 2 in the album chart is ‘Dark Matter’ by Pearl Jam.

I have mentioned Pearl Jam a few times on the blog most noteably here which was the first album a day blog. I mentioned I was listened to music by Savage Garden and Pearl Jam but was going through a phase of thinking only songs longer than 5 minutes were any good.

At the time, I was spending some of my lunch times in the technology rooms with computers so that I could do homework and revision – I was in my GCSE years. Some of the other people in the room where other super cool people like me – people also into Star Trek and Robot Wars. Many of these people were boys. There was Carl, Two Stevens (who were both only known by their last names – A and H), Mpambawashi (Known as Pamba) and maybe a Simon? Or at least one who in my memory looks like he should be called Simon. And some others. I think sometimes Andre hung out with us too. Andre was excellent and I haven’t found a time to chat about him on the blog before so I’ll throw him in here too. Anyways, this group had introduced me to Red Dwarf a few years earlier and it was during these lunch time study sessions that they introduced me to the music of Pearl Jam.

I was showing off my supercool collection of floppy disks – some of which held some songs by Savage Garden and one of the Stevens….or maybe Simon…was there a Luke? or a Ben maybe? There was one who in my memory looks a bit like Ben from A1. To be honest, in the late 90s/early 00s a lot of the boys at my school had the curtains hairstyle made popular by David Beckham and also sported by Ben from A1. The difference between someone looking like David Beckham or Ben from A1 may just be what colour hair they had. Blonde with curtains? Beckham. Dark hair with curtains? Ben.

Anyway… one of the boys with dark hair and curtains said that good music wasn’t 3 minutes long, it was 5 and pointed me to the music of Pearl Jam. I pointed out that some Savage Garden songs were 5 minutes long and then bought the album ‘Ten’ by Pearl Jam. Where 6 of 11 tracks are over 5 minutes long.

I’m going to be honest, I may be getting my timings mixed up because I was going to talk about my joy when the single ‘Do the Evolution’ came out and I could enjoying talking about a new song and listening to it at the same time as everyone else instead of playing catch up…but that song came out in 1998 and I wasn’t doing GCSEs then so why were were in the technology labs at lunch time? I wasn’t even in the same technology class as these guys so honestly who knows? I don’t know how much of what I’ve written today has been accurate! Maybe I’ve gotten all the names wrong too! Maybe there was no Ben! I mean, Beckham had curtains in 1993 but A1 didn’t release an album until 1999 so honestly, I’d ignore that whole section about names and hairstyles.

Anyway, theres a new Pearl Jam album and it’s currently number 2 in the charts – 11 tracks, about 50 minutes – 4 tracks over 5 minutes!

Pearl Jam! What are you doing to me?! You were my reason for 5 minuting?!

I guess it goes to show that not everything good needs to be 5 minutes….because this was an excellent album. I still love Pearl Jam!

If Now Was Then

Today I listened to the album which was at number 12 in the UK albums chart when I listened to it. ‘Don’t Forget Me’ is the third album by Maggie Rogers and I listened to her second album here.

I didn’t really discuss the music of the last album because I went off on a tangent about women writing songs or being asked to perform songs about men and relationships.

If you’d asked me before the whole Beyonce country album nonsense, I would have said this is what country music sounded like but country is not one of the genres of music Wikipedia lists when it describes her.

I clearly don’t know what country music is but this album sounds more like Dolly Parton than Beyonce.

I did enjoy this album and I listened to it twice but I don’t remember any of the songs from it and I’m not sure I’d recognise any of them if I heard them again.

Right 4 You

Normally, when I hate an album as much as I hated ‘We Don’t Trust You’ by Future and Metro Boomin it would mean that there was no way that I’d listen to another of their albums. I couldn’t even listen to the full album last time. It was racist, misogynistic, transphobic and homophobic. You can read my very short review of how much I hated it here.

However, ‘We Still Don’t Trust You’ by Future and Metro Boomin is curently number 11 in the UK album charts.

I also did not listen to all of this album. I mean, it was 90 minutes long!

And one of them is a mumbler! I can’t be coping with mumbling!

The bits of the album I listened to continued to be misogynistic and racist but lacked the tranphobia and homophobia…so yay!

But the real reason why I listened to and wrote about this album is because it’s April 2024 and Future and Metro Boomin have released 2 albums. This means that they are currently equalling Hear’say for number of albums released in one year.

One more album this year and they will equal Soul Asylum ¹and me!

However, Hear’say and me have one thing in common is that we released our only albums in one year. Both Future and Metro Boomin have released other albums so even if they release another album this year, I still win!

1. Having looked at some evidence, I’m beginning to think that Soul Asylum only released two albums in 1986…however, they released a lot more albums so I still win
   ↩︎

You Are What I Need

Today I listened to the album ‘Hombres’ by Gun. It’s currently number 10 on the album charts. I’ve never heard of Gun before and I think it’s a stupid name for a band. It’s difficult to search for them because typing Gun into google doesn’t bring up the band…what the should do is call themselved GVN. That could help with the search engines.

Today I was on a training day. It was another one of these days where they try to teach you how to look after your wellbeing. Honestly, my wellbeing deteriorated throughout the training day.

I’d started the day listening to GVN and felt my wellbeing was good. After the training, I had to save myself by listening to an episode of the Off Menu podcast with Ed Gamble and James Acaster. It was the live episode with Joe Wilkinson and it was excellent!