And Finally

Foster & Allen ready for chart battle with Take That

By | Published on Friday 29 October 2010

Foster & Allen will release their new album, ‘By Request’, on the same day as the new Take That long player next month, and despite all the hype surrounding Robbie Williams’ return to the one time boy band, the Irish easy listening duo reckon they could still beat the Thatters to number one. And if they did, it would compensate for a chart battle in 1993, when the two acts went up against each other in the old music VHS charts and Take That won.

Speaking to The Sun, obviously, Mick Foster got into the spirit of the good old fashioned tabloid-induced chart battle by telling the tab: “This time around it won’t happen again and we’re going to do one better with our record”.

And if you think chart battles like this are all a nonsense and that big bands don’t really care about chart positions, well, [a] you’re right but [b] you’re wrong, as Damon Albarn will attest. Speaking about the last Gorillaz album only getting to number two in both the US and UK charts, he recently told MTV: “I was a bit fucking gutted that ‘Plastic Beach’ only got to two in America. And I was obviously a bit gutted that it only got to two in England. Against fucking Boyzone!”

Still, Albarn can presumably take heart that, in the UK at least, rivals Boyzone were surely aided in part by having the albeit unwished for “one of our band members died in tragic circumstances recently, so buy our record” thing on their side. And Albarn did show a little optimism about the situation, adding: “It’s OK. I’ve had a lot of successful number twos over the years”.



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