Matthew Beckett Reviews

Now I am back on track with my blog here is the next album review, this time I am reviewing the album Victorious by Christian rock band Skillet. This hasn't been their most successful album, in this country the album peaked at 84 (their only other album to chart in this country peaked at 45), in the US it peaked at 17 ending their top 5 run of three albums, but making it four top 20 albums in a row. Skillet double up as one of my favourite Christian artists and one of my favourite rock bands (of which I have many). There are a variety of thing I love about this band, firstly I enjoy that they don't just do Christian songs, they do a variety of Christian and secular songs which makes them identifiable for everyone. They also show a lot of versatility with how they do their songs, ranging from heavy through to softer, allowing the two singers to show off all aspects of their vocals. The current line up of the land is John Cooper (lead vocals and Bass guitar since 1996), Korey ...

For my next album review I am going to talk about Katherine Jenkins 12th album Guiding Light, which was released in November 2018. The album peaked at number 17 in our charts upon release, this brought her total of top 20 albums to 10, 8 of which went top 10 (all 12 of her albums have gone top 40). All of this furthers her reputation as one of the most popular opera singers in the UK, amongst Alfie Boe, Andrea Bocelli and Russell Watson. Katherine is probably my favourite opera singer and actually the first opera singer I bought an album of, although I had heard opera and liked it when I was younger I didn't really appreciate it until I decided to buy Katherine's album Living A Dream (her 3rd album) from that point on I realised what I had been missing out on. Now my wife and I have quite a collection of opera CD's, including all of Katherine's, Alfie Boe's and Josh Groban's albums, several Collabro, Andrea Bocelli, Russell Watson and Aled Jones albums, not t...

For my second album review I will be talking about the album What You See Is What You Get by Luke Combs released November 2019, the follow up to his platinum selling debut album This One's For You. Although this album hasn't performed incredibly in the UK, peaking at 27 giving Luke his first top 40 album, it went to number one in the US and Australia. The album has spent 9 weeks in the top 20 in both the US and Australia, spawning 2 top 40 singles in the US. Now country music is my favourite genre of music, I just love everything about it and Luke combs is one of my favourites within the genre. I discovered him and several other amazing singers at around the same time, all becoming some of my favourite artists over all genres. The others in case you are interested are Carly Pearce, Kane Brown, Midland and Mitchell Tenpenny. When an album is amazing, especially a debut, I'm always left wondering how the artist will follow it up. This is exactly the situation with Luke...

This is my first album review blog and my wife has chosen Stormzy's 2nd album Heavy Is The Head for me. A big of information about the album before I review it. This is Stormzy's highly anticipated follow up to his number 1 platinum selling 2017 debut Gang Signs and Prayers. It was released 13th December last year, it is already gold certified for sales and closed last year as the 58th best selling album after 2 weeks! So far the album has spawned 5 top 10 singles with a 6th hitting the top 40, of these 2 have now gone number 1. Now if you've read my previous blog post you'll know I love Stormzy and if you haven't then I love Stormzy, ever since I first heard Know Me From I've been a fan and I am so glad he has become popular, admittedly I never thought he'd be as popular as he has been, especially given that a lot of grime artist that I also love haven't had the same success consistently. I'm talking Wiley, Skepta, JME, Lady Leshurr, Bugzy Malone e...