Will it be star of the popular kids show Hey Duggee Alexander Armstrong with Upon a Different Shore? Or in an unexpected twist will it be the star of He’s Pasquale, I’m Walsh Bradley Walsh with Chasing Dreams (I would say ‘I see what he’s done, there’ but actually I hadn’t until someone had pointed it out to me)? Links should open in Spotify.
I endeavour to listen to BOTH at the weekend despite probably being about ten years below the target age range. Here’s what we do know though:
- Armstrong is a classically trained singer. Walsh is a classically trained footballer.
- Armstrong released an album last year, A Year of Songs, which evidently did well enough to warrant another one this year. In fact it topped the Classical Album Chart, which I always felt was missing from The Chart Show.
- There is a cover of MacArthur Park on Armstrong’s album which we can’t wait to listen to.
- Chasing Dreams is temporarily out of stock at time of writing on Amazon, although it’s below Upon a Different Shore on the Amazon charts.
- It’s an album full of covers but the title track, Chasing Dreams was co-written by Walsh himself.
If you’ve listened to them, do let us know what you thought.
Walsh 10th in the midweeks:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38136836
First off, yes, obviously I’m biased. I’ve listened to both albums, Xander’s several times and Bradley’s once.
I was pleasantly surprised by how good Bradley’s voice is. It’s a nice collection of swing standards (the one new track excepted) which your Uncle Keith would probably love. I can imagine Bradley touring this very successfully. Real ‘all-round entertainer’ stuff.
Xander’s album is very different. His first, A Year of Songs, was a collection of songs, ranging from musical numbers to folk songs. The choices here are even more eclectic (Vaughan Williams, the Stranglers, Kygo…)but there’s very much a theme running through the whole – it’s a good old-fashioned concept album, in fact. This is emphasised by the very clever arrangements, where motifs from one song are used in the accompaniments for others.
Clearly I would say this, but I love Xander’s album. He has a very good voice, and performs these songs well. I think it might have been a bit self-indulgent for him to play oboe as well, but that aside, I think he’s done an excellent job. Not just for your mum’s Christmas.
Oh my:
In a bit of an aside, the probable final season of The Amazing Race (at least the US version) will begin airing on April 21st (per a release today). They’re completely throwing the format out, at least when it comes to the teams- instead of pre-existing couples, 22 contestants will all do a challenge before the race begins. The winner gets to pick their partner, 2nd place then picks their partner, and so on.
It’s a bit of a sad ending to the show if this is indeed it- I was hoping they’d know in advance that they were filming the last season so they could set up a “Ultimate Race” with all-winners (or at least teams who made it to the final leg of their season). If the ratings do OK in April/May, they may still, but considering the show was very close to cancellation after the first few seasons, getting 29 seasons is a very good accomplishment.
Such a fall from grace, it’s quite sad. I got into TAR at around TAR14 when Mel & Mike first ran (big Mike White fan) and I’ve been following it ever since, but I absolutely tapped out over the last few seasons. I think for me personally the downfall started when they went to Belfast a few seasons back (no personal bias, although I was pissed off they didn’t get back to the e-mail I sent when I was 16 asking to be the greeter) and I realised how pitiful the tasks were. I know Northern Ireland so well, and they could have done *so* much better than Bog Snorkelling and serving food on the same relative budget. Once you’re disillusioned with the design, the leg design also goes out the window (everything is a clump point, every leg has a “wait here until 8am”, hell, one leg in the last season even had the pit stop RIGHT AFTER a train ride).
The second series of All-Stars absolutely soured me, I loved so many of those teams and yet even with the casting right for me personally, they angled it on conflict when all I care about are the tasks & locations. Blind date racing was a awful idea, and this takes even the element of romance away from it, so there is no format left at all. I really hope they get to TAR30, only because I’d like them to do one final All-Stars that they actually try with.
I agree- I’ve enjoyed the last couple of seasons of TAR Canada, because they do vary it a little (mainly through the duels- at a few points during the race, they have a specific task. The first two teams to get to that point have to do that task- the first to successfully complete it can go on, the loser must wait for the next team to get there and duel against them, and so on-for the last two teams, the loser has to serve a time penalty before moving on- it can really shuffle the deck, especially at the front).
Still, I’m a realist- the “first wave” of major reality shows are coming to the end of their natural lives (American Idol ended last year, TAR probably is done, though Survivor and DWTS are still doing pretty well and Big Brother is renewed until 2018 at least).