Fleetwood Mac's 'Rumours' expected to be announced as one of the year’s best selling vinyl albums in the UK.

Nearly 5 million (4.8m) LPs were purchased in the UK over the past 12 months – a leap of nearly a tenth on sales in 2019 and a 13th consecutive year of growth since 2007. Vinyl LPs now account for nearly 1 in 5 of all albums purchased (18%) and are at their highest level since the early nineties. Vinyl generates almost twice as much in industry revenues as music video streaming platforms, such as YouTube, despite the tens of billions of videos watched every year.

The BPI will report its final music consumption figures on January 4th 2021.

Predicted best-selling vinyl albums for 2020 (Based on YTD Official Charts data)

1. Fleetwood Mac – Rumours
2. Oasis – (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?
3. Amy Winehouse – Back To Black
4. Nirvana – Nevermind
5. Harry Styles – Fine Line
6. Kylie Minogue – Disco
7. AC/DC – Power Up
8. Queen – Greatest Hits
9. IDLES – Ultra Mono
10. Arctic Monkeys – Live At The Royal Albert Hall

Source: BPI

Wednesday, December 23, 2020

FLEETWOOD MAC 1969-1974 (The Best Reissues And Box Sets Of 2020)

The Best Reissues And Box Sets Of 2020

FLEETWOOD MAC
1969-1974

This box offers remastered versions of the seven studio albums Fleetwood Mac recorded during its formative period. There are some stone-cold classics here – the early blues-leaning, but not entirely blues-derived, Then Play On, featuring founding guitarist Peter Green, and the later ones, too, including Bare Trees and Heroes Are Hard To Find, which showcase guitarist and songwriter Bob Welch. That's not all the required listening however: There's also a curious radio set from December 1974, just before Welch left the band – that fateful change that led to the arrival of Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham and the hitmaking era that followed. In this "before" document, it's possible to hear all the stylistic evolutions of Fleetwood Mac swirling powerfully together: Starting with the incantory blues and whiplashing rhythm-section choreography of "Green Manalishi (With The Two Prong Crown)," the set includes a lovely and wistful rendering of Christine McVie's "Spare Me a Little," a wicked "Black Magic Woman" and Welch's "Hypnotized," which dissolves the concert in a dreamlike aura. It's a glimpse of an inventive, well-oiled band at an amazing moment, made just a bit more amazing when you discover it was one of only two FM performances in all of 1974.

- Tom Moon NPR