My Music Chart (ish): January 2018

You will have noticed the 'ish' in the article title and that's because this month the listening to music has been a little thin on the ground. This month I finally got around to listening to a Podcast recommended by several friends which has meant that I haven't listened to anywhere near as much music as I usually do but more on that later. A chart is a chart and so I will cover the music that I did get to listen to...

Look at all that red though! The total play count is down more than half of the December count (and what is more normal for me).

In addition to the play count, which is really low, almost everything that I have played this month has come from a handful of albums and been a New Entry on the Chart... 11 out of 20 of the tracks played came from the Original Cast Recording Album for Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: The Musical.

For those that are not in the know, I occasionally frequent the stage or tread the boards as they say. I am very honoured to have been cast in the part of Tick/Mitzi Mitosis (the part played by Hugo Weaving in the movie and Jason Donavon & Duncan James in the West End production) for a production that runs in June 2018. Needless to say, I was incredibly honoured to even be considered for the production, let alone be cast in a lead role. Our rehearsals started back at the beginning of January and so I have been listening to the original cast album (as well as rehearsal tracks that aren't part of iTunes) a fair amount. 

There is a fair amount of Britney Spears in the rest of the chart, with her appearing four times and providing the only re-entry of the month. 

I did want to mention one of the new entries which came from an artist that, before Christmas, I had never even heard of. LP. Yup, that is the artist name. My Dad introduced me to her music on Boxing day and I instantly fell in love with it. I can not understate just how much I fell in love with it but within 3 tracks I was straight onto iTunes downloading the album and checking out her discography so I could find out more about her.

Lost On You is a stunning song, centred around the break up of a relationship or more specifically, that point in a relationship when you realise it isn't working out. Give it a listen...

This month the Number 1 came from what will be one of the incredible numbers in the production of 'Priscilla'. The song is actually a bit of a medley of songs from earlier in the show with a bit of Kylie Minogue thrown in for good measure! The song itself comes at a very poignant point in the show where my character is nervously talking to his son about his own sexuality and his job as a drag queen. It is going to be a beautiful moment and will certainly have a certain resonance for me personally as I gear up to become a father!

That pretty much sums up the chart for this month, so here is the final Top 20. Usually, I finish up here but keep on reading below if you want to know a little bit more about why the music has been less of a feature this month, it involves porn..........

As I mentioned at the beginning, I have been completely engrossed in a Podcast. A podcast that I have had several people recommend in just as many months. Indeed, I am a little late to the party that is 'My Dad Wrote A Porno' but I am now most firmly on that bandwagon!

For those of you that don't know, the premise of the podcast is very simple. Jamie and two of his friends, Alice and James meet weekly to read the next chapter of Belinda Blinked... No, I am not writing out the full official title as that would be ridiculous and take as long as the rest of this article. Those of you that will have listened to the podcast will know what I am talking about.

Belinda Blinked is an 'erotic' novel written by Jamie's Dad under the pen name of Rocky Flintstone. That in itself should tell you a lot about what this podcast is. Jamie reads the novel and the three of them provide a commentary and dare I say, a critique of the work. I must take my hat off to Jamie for even embarking on this podcast. I am not sure I could read out aloud the literal porn if my father had written it. The quality of the novel is, let's just say, unusual, which leads to much hilarity as the three try to persevere with it.

Many of us use the term LOL when we do not actually Laugh Out Loud but this podcast is lol-worthy in every sense of the word. I can not tell you the number of times I have failed to stifle a laugh on the London Underground and then had complete strangers look at me like some crazy lunatic. To be fair, I probably look like one of the characters in the book when it happens so those strangers can be forgiven. It has really brought light and laughter to my commute which has been perfect for this dreary January. One statement of caution though, if you are at all prudish or get embarrassed by terrible dialogue (from the novel, not the commentators) and the graphic accounts of occasionally physically impossible sexual acts, this might not be the podcast for you. (That sentence was a pain to write - Rocky is clearly rubbing off on me - not physically of course).

If you have never heard of the show and you think I'm a bit little nuts for listening to the podcast, like, why would anyone WANT to listen to that, just bear in mind I am just one of the 60 Million downloads the show has had! I've managed to binge the entire three seasons of the show in under a month so I can definitely recommend it!

And that wraps everything up for what I have been listening to this month.

Thanks for stopping by and reading x