Ladies and gentlemen . . . seconds out for the Christmas 1998 CD challenge. In the red corner, we have the young hotshots of pop music, led by Billie, B*Witched, All Saints, Five and Robbie Williams; they're lean, mean and cleaning up in the record stores. In the blue corner we have the golden oldies, survivors from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s still fighting fit despite their age, and keen to make a comeback in a market which has recently been overrun by boy bands and girl groups.
The young guns have glamour, energy and high-street cred, but the old guard have experience, superstar quality, and a good stock of back catalogue material.
This Christmas, the grand old popsters are putting their past on the shelves, releasing a record number of greatest hits packages in the hope that punters will buy a piece of rock 'n' roll history and pass over the teeny-poppers' transient offerings.
This CD title bout will be fought in record stores around the world, during the industry's most crucial sales period, and the prize is a top spot in the Christmas charts - documented proof that the punters have forked out their seasonal cash for your particular product.
Leading the fightback against the teeny-pop menace are long-established artists like U2, George Michael, REM, The Rolling Stones, Meat Loaf, Dire Straits and Cher, with reinforcements coming in from "in-betweenies" such as M People and Alanis Morissette, artists who have only been around a few years, but who have developed enough commercial clout to qualify as "mature".
Early signs point towards a grey Christmas - at the end of October, for the first time in chart history, the top five singles in Britain were all new entries, and four of them - Cher, U2, Culture Club and George Michael - have been around a lot longer than Boyzone.
With a crop of hardy perennials on the shelves this season, the record industry is hoping to gather in a bumper harvest following a rather fallow period for major artist action. This year was notable for the lack of "event" albums like The Verve's Urban Hymns or Oasis's Be Here Now, the kind of records which carry enough weight to pull the whole industry along in their commercial wake. But 1998's pickings have seemed meagre.
The two big event albums of this year were only released early this month, but they've already outperformed the whole year's crop, and look likely to emerge as two of the biggest sellers of 1998. Ironically, U2's The Best Of 1980-1990 and Alanis Morisette's Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie hit the shops on the same day, giving retailers their best 24 hours of the entire year. The U2 album went platinum in Britain within a week of its release, but in the US, the Irish band's monumental back catalogue toppled before the might of Morissette's quirky, cathartic songwriting. The 24-year-old Canadian singer shot straight into the Billboard 200 album charts at number one, leaving U2 in second place and setting a new record for first-week sales by a female artist. According to SoundScan, which compiles the official Billboard charts, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie sold 469,000 units in its first week, beating the previous record of 422,500 which was set by Fugees singer Lauryn Hill last September.
Major US retailers such as Best Buy, Musicland, Target, Blockbuster Music, Transworld Entertainment and Camelot Music will remember November 3rd as the day the Christmas rush really began, with customers snapping up the Morissette and U2 albums, and also new releases by Celine Dion and The Rolling Stones. REM's latest album, Up, also had a big opening in the States, but its initial surge is likely to be followed by a sales plummet as punters shy away from its resolutely downbeat style. It will also be interesting to see if Morissette's album can sustain its momentum and hold its high chart position - especially against the army of greatest hits CDs which are currently assaulting the charts.
This Christmas, the market is top-heavy with "best of" albums by some of the world's biggest pop stars. Leading the pack are such heavyweights as Mariah Carey (the biggest-selling female artist of the 1990s), George Michael, U2, Phil Collins, Meat Loaf, Dire Straits, Julio Iglesias, Tom Jones, Duran Duran, Culture Club, Motley Crue and M People. Also in the shops are live albums from The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith and Garth Brooks, b-sides collections from Oasis and Metallica, and retrospective box-sets from John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen. "It's the biggest Christmas I've seen so far," says Mr Darren Smith of EMI Ireland. "I've never seen so many big artists with albums out at the same time.
"We spend 50 per cent more on advertising and promotion during the Christmas season than we do during the rest of the year," says Ms Kathryn Mason, press and promotions manager with BMG Ireland. "Most of the seasonal CDs are advertised on TV - if it's not on TV then it won't be a hit. At Christmas, we're putting our money on just five or six albums, doing co-operative ads with HMV, Virgin Megastores and Golden Discs, and pushing what we think will be the big sellers. Some albums have been out since June, but we re-promote them for the Christmas gift market. A lot of people only buy albums for Christmas presents, and they go for what they see advertised on TV."
"The orders coming in this week are phenomenal - nearly double those of the previous week," said Ms Mason. "The Christmas rush has well and truly started."
The biggest item on BMG's Christmas list is M People, whose "best of" album is currently at number four in the British charts.
"We're spending more money on promoting M People than we've ever spent on any artist. It's the perfect timing for the campaign, especially with the band in Dublin for two gigs at the RDS next week."
Ms Mary Clare O'Siochru of Sony Music (Ireland) will have plenty of reason to celebrate this Christmas: sales of George Michael's best of collection and Oasis's The Masterplan have surpassed all expectations, and the new Mariah Carey collection is expected to move even more units than U2 or Alanis Morissette.
"The re-orders for George Michael are amazing," says Ms O'Siochru. "He easily knocked U2 off the number one slot in Britain, although the boys beat him on their own turf. The Oasis album, which remember is only a b-sides collection, is proving almost as successful as their regular albums. We're completely taken aback. Mariah Carey will be the big one this Christmas - she's already sold 70 million albums in her career. She's had 13 consecutive number one hits, and all of them will be on this album, plus her duet with Whitney Houston for the soundtrack of Prince Of Egypt, which might even beat The Spice Girls to the Christmas number one spot."
Ms O'Siochru is also looking to strong home sales for Irish artists like B*Witched, Cathy Vard and Ronan Tynan. "It's been a great year for music sales, although we won't know the exact figures till the end of December. But with such a variety of talent both international and Irish in the shops this Christmas, there's something there for everyone from your granny to your baby sister."
