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Tom Odell hits number one with Long Way Down despite the 0/10 NME review that prompted his father to complain

 

Adam Sherwin
Wednesday 26 June 2013 16:24 BST
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It’s good news for Tom Odell’s father but the NME’s worst nightmare. The singer, whose 0/10 review from the music magazine prompted a complaint from his dad, is set to top the charts.

Long Way Down, the debut album by the hotly-tipped singer from Chichester, is on track to enter the album charts at number one, according to the midweek update released by the Official Charts Company.

Odell, 22, is set to topple Kanye West from the top slot. “At this mid-way stage, the album has nearly sold as much as the rest of this week’s Top 5 artist albums combined,” the charts company said.

Record-buyers appear not to have been influenced by a scathing review in the NME, which described the singer as a “poor, misguided wannabe who’s fallen into the hands of the music industry equivalent of Hungarian sex traffickers.”

The magazine was forced to field an angry phone call from Odell’s airline pilot father, who objected to the dismissive review.

The NME predicted that the emotive balladeer would command commercial success. “He’ll be all over 2013 like a virulent dose of musical syphilis,” the magazine said. The publication warned that Odell’s “offensively dull piano pop” was “destined for Brits ubiquity”.

Lily Allen, who discovered Odell and signed him to her record label, tweeted to encourage her four million followers to buy his album, following the NME review.

She added: “For all the people asking who the NME is, it’s like this fanzine that people used to read in the 90s.”

Odell, who has already won the Critics’ Choice Brit Award this year, will perform on the John Peel Stage at Glastonbury this weekend.

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