The Rolling Stones ‘Blue & Lonesome’ isn’t just the number one album in Australia this week. It is number one by a long shot.
‘Blue & Lonesome’ clocked up almost 15,000 sales last week. Michael Bublé’s ‘Christmas’ was almost 4000 behind (and that is a five-year old release).
Metallica’s ‘Hardwired … To Self Destruct’ was around 9,500 sales behind The Rolling Stones.
That’s not bad for a band whose four members have a collective age of 289 years and an average of 72.25 years.
The Rolling Stones last number one album in Australia was ‘Voodoo Lounge’ in 1994. Before that ‘Tattoo You’ topped the Australian chart in 1981, ‘Goats Head Soup’ in 1973, ‘Sticky Fingers’ in 1971, ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request’ in 1967 and the debut ‘The Rolling Stones’ in 1964.
‘Blue & Lonesome’ is the 23rd Stones album and first all-covers album. It is the first Stones album since ‘Dirty Work’ where Mick Jagger hasn’t played guitar and the first album since ‘It’s Only Rock n Roll’ to not feature a Keith Richards lead vocal on at least one song.
The album features two songs with Eric Clapton ‘Everybody Knows About My Good Thing’ and ‘I Can’t Quit You Baby’. Clapton played on a version of ‘Brown Sugar’ from ‘Sticky Fingers’ recorded in 1970 that went unused until the 2015 reissue of the classic Stones album.
