SubscribeAnd I do mean bad as in the opposite of good. In the name of blog research, I’ve just listened to James Blunt’s Back to Bedlam so you don’t have to. Okay, I only really bothered with free thirty second samples of each track, but that was more than enough. It’s clearly sh*te. But there he is at number one for five weeks in a row. ‘I’ve seen peace… I’ve seen pain… resting on the shoulders of your name,’ he nonsensically warbles on one of the more melancholy tracks that lets you know the album’s nearing its end and its nearly time to slash your wrists.
And then there’s that Daniel Powter running close behind in a bid to prove things can get worse.
Yet somehow it feels like the ’80s all over again: a trend I first picked up last May. It’s a good that records stay at number one for a few weeks. Music – even sh*te music – is the soundtrack to life and summer 2005’s defined by James Blunt’s You’re Beautiful. More interestingly this revival of the music chart’s relevance coincides with a revival of Adult Orientated Rock (AOR). So a word of caution and a confession: first time around I was taken in. My first music purchase was Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required and I owned Dire Straights Brothers in Arms. The thing is everyone owned those records, they sold in record breaking numbers.
Today every granny who works in a charity shop knows they’re not worth putting on the shelf. Tomorrow, they’ll be turning away James and Daniel and you’ll be denying ownership. So do the right thing. Buy Kaiser Chiefs.
