Garth Brooks. Whitney Houston. Jewel. For music lovers, Christmas would seem to have arrived early: more than 10 major pop acts are issuing new CDs on the single day of Nov. 17, making it the heaviest release date ever. Music-industry folks have dubbed it Super Tuesday.
The music business could use the lift. Album sales in 1998 are up only 4.3% over 1997, so record companies are praying for a flashy fourth quarter (the holiday season accounts for 40% to 60% of annual record sales). DreamWorks, for example, is releasing not one but three sound tracks (pop, country and inspirational) to its film The Prince of Egypt. Will fans be overjoyed or overwhelmed? James ("Jimmy Jam") Harris, who produced a song on one of the sound tracks, says Super Tuesday has the industry "holding its breath."
Producer Sean ("Puffy") Combs, head of Bad Boy Records, pushed back the release date for one of his groups, the vocal quartet 112, to avoid the crush. "People are putting out albums because it's the holiday, not because the albums are ready," says Combs. "There's a lot of greed out there." He predicts the aftermath of Super Tuesday won't be pretty: "It's going to look like a crash on Wall Street."
Success doesn't require a gaudy debut. Jewel's debut sold 1,000 copies its first week; it went on to sell 6.2 million. Ruffhouse Records' head, Chris Schwartz, says CDs that survive this fall will need "something special." Here's what they're offering.
GARTH BROOKS DOUBLE LIVE [rating: 2 1/2 musical notes] PREVIOUS ALBUM Limited Series, 1998 COPIES SOLD 1.4 million
Garth Brooks is the king of excess--he just wears a cowboy hat instead of a crown. Everything he does seems to come accompanied by exclamation marks. His new album isn't just one CD but two! His new live version of Friends in Low Places stretches on for almost nine minutes! And, to push Double Live, he's planning one of the most ambitious promotional campaigns of the year! Says Joe Kvidera, general manager of Tower Records in Chicago's Lincoln Park: "He's just so relentless promoting his stuff. It's kind of scary."
On Tuesday, Brooks will do a closed-circuit performance that will be beamed to 2,300 Wal-Marts across the country; the next day he'll do a one-hour special on NBC, taking questions from fans via telephone and e-mail. Garth's goal: to sell 1 million copies in one week. And then he wants to shoot fire out of his eyes like a god. (Just joking about that last part.)
The songs on Double Live are mostly good, home-cooked fun, but sitting through the 26-song album is a bit like enduring a 26-course meal. The best song is the calmest: Brooks' solemn reading of Bob Dylan's To Make You Feel My Love. The album's biggest flaw is American Honky-Tonk Bar Association, a demagogic number that mocks welfare recipients. A true populist would show empathy for people who can't afford his albums.
WHITNEY HOUSTON MY LOVE IS YOUR LOVE [rating: 2 1/2 musical notes] PREVIOUS ALBUM I'm Your Baby Tonight, 1990 COPIES SOLD 2.3 million
Whitney Houston went into the studio planning to sweeten up a greatest-hits album with a few new songs; she ended up finishing a full new album. Arista chief Clive Davis says the project came together "literally in the last eight weeks."