UK Top 10 Albums
UK Top 10 Albums: 1-14-22 – 1-20-22
a pop LP that isn’t popular is a question mark…
UK Top 10 Albums: 1-7-22 – 1-13-22
two of Sheeran’s last three albums
UK Top 10 Albums: 12-31-21 – 1-05-21
both a surprise and inevitable
UK Top 10 Albums: 12-24-21 – 12-30-21
I could have been listening to Adele…
UK Top 10 Albums: 12-17-21 – 12-23-21
Adele still on top -which means she will be there for the next four weeks
UK Top 10 Albums: 12-10-21 – 12-16-21
music for adults who remain with zero taste
UK Top 10 Albums: 12-3-21 – 12-9-21
An abysmal top ten as we reach for the end of the year
UK Top 10 Albums: 11-26-21 – 12-2-21
a good (not great) album with maybe two top notch tracks
UK Top 10 Albums: 11-19-21 – 11-25-21
Taylor will be gone next week when Adele takes her place
UK Top 10 Albums: 11-12-21 – 11-18-21
Sheeran toppled from # 1 in ABBA’s palace coup
UK Top 10 Albums: 11-5-21 – 11-11-21
Ed at his most melodic
UK Top 10 Albums: 10-29-21 – 11-4-21
a toxic match of arrogance and artistic pretension
UK Top 10 Albums: 10-22-21 – 10-28-21
craptacular
UK Top 10 Albums: 10-15-21 – 10-21-21
except for the title track the songs are on vacation
UK Top 10 Albums: 10-8-21 – 10-14-21
the wittily named greatest hits package has “Breakeven” and NOTHING ELSE…
UK Top 10 Albums: 10-1-21 – 10-7-21
don’t travel well
UK Top 10 Albums: 9-24-21 – 9-30-21
Drake beating out Lil Nas X
UK Top 10 Albums: 9-17-21 – 9-23-21
across the pond they are rock and roll superstars
UK Top 10 Albums: 9-10-21 – 9-16-21
If Drake and Kanye thought it through they’d do a stadium tour together,
UK Top 10 Albums: 9-3-21 – 9-9-21
next week Drake will have the top spot
UK Top 10 Albums: 8-27-21 – 9-2-21
Is Olivia gonna spend all year here???.
UK Top 10 Albums: 8-20-21 – 8-26-21
The Killers exist so Bruce Springsteen can point at them and say,”hey, even at 70 years of age at least I’m not them”.
UK Top 10 Albums: 8-13-21 – 8-19-21
he ain’t Stormzy
UK Top 10 Albums: 8-6-21 – 8-12-21
the zeitgeist no longer in her back pocket
UK Top 10 Albums 6-28-15
Fleetwood Mac just closed the Isle Of Wight Festival, which explains what this is doing here, and Simon played with Sting in London a coupla weeks ago. I guess something happened in the UK to bring the estimable Mr.Miller back on the charts. Before his life was tragically cut short on a plane ride to entertain the troops during WWII back in 1944. Pardon me boys if you know this, but Miller got his distinctive sound by moving a saxophonist move to clarinter and playing the saxophones part.
UK TOP 10 ALBUMS 6-21-15
Nobody is surprised at the first two, what I’m surprised at is the Brand New Heavies leaders great EDM band Leftfield having a new album I don’t know and I am surprised how it is the best sounding album around and I completely missed it. Their first in 16 years and it is mindblowing. Don’t let this happen to you.
UK Top 10 Albums 6-14-15
One of the strangest things about life is the UK’s penchant for high brow, low talent classical pop pap, here represented by Will Young and Collabro -both brought to us by Simon Cowell, a man who knows the value of everything and the worth of nothing.
UK Top 10 Albums 6-7-15
A$AP Rocky has been on heavy rotation all week and I see no reason to stop now, Will Young on the other hand is a painfully wimpy MOR singer who I have whole other levels of meh for. This is the fourth # 1, who won the very first season of the franchise that would be know as American Idol, the UK’s Pop Idol.
UK Top 10 Albums 5-31-15
The UK invasion isn’t very invasive any longer. And when you aren’t quite sure what to think, grade C covers it all. You’re all average and hey.. that’s ok
UK Top 10 Albums 5-17-15
If Trance has won the battle for the singles charts, the album charts are very volatile, it is a world where the cult band can make its presence felt… if only for a week. Blur at # 2 and Mumford at # 1, the revenge of rock? Yeah, but not really, because who knows how long it will last\. Meanwhile, Sheeran and Swift are still hanging on. Sheeran? one month short of a year in the top ten
UK Top 10 Albums 5-3-14
Perhaps it’s a form of snobbery, but is there anything worse than high-low culture pop music like Josh Groban: yes, he has a good voice but everything it touches melts into sugar cotton candy. It is all sticky and horrid. One exception: “Pure Imagination” isn’t bad… That’s why it is D+ and not D-. It’s like Christian MOR without the excuse of worship.
UK Top 10 Albums 4-26-15
Just in time for his upcoming tour of the the UK with Sting (I saw it when Iit played New York and liked it fine for what it’s worth… at least the Paul segment), this 19 song ultimate collection is Paul’s first # 1 since 1990. It is pretty darn good as well, a coupla S&G for taste and heapings of Graceland. That should do it, right?
UK TOP 10 Albums 4-19-15
This ain’t much is it? And much less volatile than the singles chart which is weird, in the States if you get on the singles charts you stay a while but albums fly in and out of the albums chart very rapidly. Nothing against Kanye West, I couldn’t be a bigger fan, but if we expect his new album to change the year around, it’s gonna be a long wait.
UK Top 10 Albums 4-12-15
What is bizarre and strange about the Prodigy is that they were so unique and cutting edge on The Fat Of The Land and nearly 20 years later they are exactly the same. We call this a Status Quo complex, psychiatrists are fascinated by it, the Prodigy grow older without ever changing in the slightest. In 2035 they will be sound exactly the same.
UK Top 10 Albums 4-4-15
Can’t say I am too fond of James Bay, another small town boy way more precious than anybody really needs to be, I prefer Seasick Steve, a blues guy from Cali who is big in the UK because he sounds like an English blues guy and not a US. Because he is white?
UK Top 10 Albums 3-28-15
: I’ve listened to the new Kendrick a lot and I am getting a handle on it but it reminds me of the recent D’Angelo album… shouldn’t this stuff not feel like homework? Like hard work? Like a slog, waiting for the songs to reveal themselves. And I guess they do slowly, “Wesley’s Theory”, “i” and “u”, the undeniable “The Blacker The Berry” but again, would I have spent this much time wthout the hype? Well, yes for “The Blacker The Berry”…
UK Top 10 Albums 3-21-15
Nothing personal, but the thing about pop music is it has to be popular and Madonna better start selling some more copies. Meanwhile, the X Factor winning Rebecca Ferguson and the five piece harmony band take on black music, with varying degrees of success and not a lot of it.
UK Top 10 Albums 3-7-15
Royal Blood are opening for Foo Fighters at Citifield this summer (and man does it seem far away as I write this, with the snow snowing, and the wind blowing) and despite our hopes and prayers for a wonderful summertime, that is one night that sounds like a nightmare. Royal Blood, is bombastic deep throat modern rock. Dreadful.
UK Top 10 Albums 3-1-15
Thunder are a really good mainstream UK style hard rock band, been around over 20 years, and are in a league with the best out there. They’re opening for ZZ Top in London and that sounds like a concert to be missed under no circumstances. Meanwhile, my buddy Johnny McElhone’s (I knew him when he managed Ramona) band Texas is back on the charts.
UK Top 10 Albums Week Of 2-21-15
I am seeing #10, Gregory Porter, in a couple of weeks at the the Harlem Arts Salon at Harlem just as the supple grammy award winning jazz baritone reaches the height of his career with the most streamed jazz album of all times, 2013’s Liquid Spirit. The big man will be on the same bill as another big man, Tomas Doncker, who you might well claim is to the blues what Porter is to jazz.
US Top 10 Albums 2-21-15
How about Bob Dylan’s 28th top ten album., eh? How about that. Costello on the new Dylan: “I think it’s really, truthfully, one of the greatest records he’s ever made. It’s so soulful. He’s obviously lived with those songs in his heart for a long time, and he sings them that way
Uk Top 10 Albums 2-14-15
before we get to Dylan’s EIGHTH # 1 album in the UK (about 20% of all the albums he has ever released), let’s scratch our heads in amazement at the return of a guitarist who performed quite well with Dylan himself, Mark Knopfler. Brothers In Arms has two 80s masterpieces an nothing else much.