Beautiful World – Take That – 2006

First listen?: No

I LOVE TAKE THAT. It’s no secret that Take That were my very first music obsession, in fact, I had a whole blog series named after one of their best hits Everything Changes. They were the perfect boyband, they could dance, looks suitably ridiculous for most of the 90s and had incredible single after incredible single, most of which were written by someone in the band. After a 10 year break how could they get back together as a man band? I think everyone was shocked that Take That came back bigger than ever, their post reunion career has vastly outperformed their original time, but the biggest surprise was that the music was as brilliant as ever. From the opening guitar strum of Reach Out this is an album that has a definite identity, a newly matured sound, but still pure Take That throughout. Other highlights are Like I Never Loved You At All and Ain’t No Sense Of Love, songs with hooks so good you’ll swear they were singles. Howard and Jason finally get their chance to shine here, the former delivering an album standout performance on the title track, while speaking of shining Mark Owen manages to deliver one of the bands all time catchiest hits in Shine. It’s Gary Barlow and his gorgeous vocals that truly comes into their own here though, it’s strange to look back on 2006 when him and Robbie still weren’t speaking, since then we’ve had a 5 piece reunion and various co-writes for the once resentful pair. In fact returning to Beautiful World nearly 10 years on again is an interesting thing all together. Take That are now at possibly the lowest point of their career, not just in terms of members, so to remember the seemingly overnight success of this album is interesting. Comeback single Patience is by far the best example of what this album and Take That are all about. A soaring chorus, pure singalong that deserves an Arena or Stadium full of people singing along. Beautiful World might not be the best Take That album (Probably The Circus for me) but it’s arguably their most consistent. What a comeback.

Rating: 8/10

Will I listen again?: Yes. Pretty sure I’ll be listening to Take That for the rest of my life.

Best Track: Patience (but Ain’t No Sense Of Love is a close second)