James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 15: On

And so to ‘O’ that most circular of letters.

And when you think about the great albums of the nineties, there really could only be one choice for the letter ‘O’.

So it’s almost beyond belief that I’ve gone with a different one.

But I stand by today’s choice.

It was an album that I loved as a teenager.

We’ll deal with the album I should have picked for today in a later post (tomorrow’s post in fact), but for today let’s just enjoy this one.

O is for On

Echobelly were another of those bands that will forever be linked with nineties Britpop, which is a double-edged sword, insofar as they enjoyed quite a bit of success during the height of Britpop but have probably been unfairly tarnished with that brush ever since. They’ve certainly never really had anything like the same levels of popularity in the ensuing years. The health problems of lead singer Sonya Madan immediately following on from the success of second album ‘On’ no doubt stunted their ability to capitalise on their early hits, but in truth, the fickle world of popular music was unlikely to accommodate Echobelly beyond the Britpop era.

The are still going though and still perfectly good at what they do.

If the lyrics of some the tracks on ‘On’ deal with the seedier side of life, it is nonetheless a pretty optimistic and uplifting album.

And no song exemplifies this optimism more than lead single ‘Great Things’.

I couldn’t find the video for it but here’s a performance from one of the great music TV shows of the nineties ‘The White Room’: