A melodic 12 months in music

Dec 30 2008 By Andy Welch

2008 has been a huge year in music, with new albums from big guns such as Oasis, Coldplay and Guns N' Roses, among others. We take a look back over the highs and lows of the last 12 months.

At this time of year, surrounded by Christmas carols and festive tunes, it's hard to remember the new musical dawn of January 2007.

Bookending the year, as always, is X Factor.

As 2008 started, we'd just seen Leon Jackson crowned winner of the X Factor and take the Christmas No 1 spot, but where is he now?

His album, released in October, flopped, and no date has been set for the full release of a follow-up single after the song could only limp in at No 32 on the iTunes chart.

The poor Scot's fortunes probably won't improve as he's been traded in for a younger model with a bigger and better voice. Expect to hear a lot more from this year's winner, Alexandra Burke, in due course.

Moving on, January and February saw a raft of big releases from artists including Hot Chip, who unveiled Made In The Dark to rapturous reviews, hotly tipped singer Adele, who gave us 19, and British Sea Power, brought us their third effort Do You Like Rock Music?

The latter two earned Mercury Prize nominations for their troubles, more of which later, and as spring arrived, so did Duffy.

Young, hugely talented and blessed with soulful, retro voices, Duffy was pitched head-to-head by the music press with the aforementioned Adele.

While the Londoner might have pipped her Welsh rival to the coveted BBC Sound Of 2008 and Critic's Choice BRIT awards, the diminutive blonde emerged as the real star.

Duffy's debut collection has now sold more than four million copies worldwide, and is currently the biggest-selling album in the UK this year. She's also the darling of America, and heads off to Australia and New Zealand in the New Year to complete her global takeover.

February also saw Elbow release their fourth album, The Seldom Seen Kid. The Manchester band have been together for nearly 20 years, yet despite making beautiful, emotional music, have never quite received the publicity they deserve. That all changed in the months leading up to the Mercury Music Prize in September.

Singer Guy Garvey had said how happy the band were to have been nominated, but no one really expected them to win with Radiohead, Estelle, Neon Neon and the mysterious dub-step artist Burial, who was the favourite, among the other nominees.

Thankfully, the judges did the right thing and awarded Elbow the prestigious prize.

June saw Coldplay release their long-awaited fourth album, the preposterously titled Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends.

The new album, almost universally praised, saw the band bring in a new wardrobe for public appearances. They've since spent the remainder of the year dressed like extras from an Adam Ant video, but it hasn't put fans off. Viva La Vida sold a whopping 125,000 copies on its first day.

Compared with recent summers, this year's festival season passed without much of a commotion, although the music at Glastonbury grabbed more headlines than the weather for a change.

The addition of Jay-Z as a headliner split the crowd down the middle, with some proclaiming the American's arrival a piece of scheduling genius. Others, including Oasis's Noel Gallagher, thought hip hop and Glastonbury should never meet.

Mr Beyonce Knowles turned out to be quite the performer, and in making his entrance on stage to Wonderwall, had the last word in the argument.

Things quietened down in September, although Madonna dropped in to London with her Sticky & Sweet tour.

Critics marvelled at Madge's physique, but behind the scenes things were not right, as we later found out.

She and film-director husband Guy Ritchie announced their divorce not long after, with the Material Girl recently ordered to pay her ex-hubby somewhere in the region of 96 million dollars. What that amount equates to in pounds depends on which bank has crashed or been bailed out on the day you're checking the exchange rates.

Talking of financial crisis, the music industry seems to have bucked the trend a little this year, especially in the final quarter.

Oasis and Keane released new albums in October and both achieved huge sales. Around 700,000 tickets for Oasis' summer 2009 shows also sold out in record time.

The Gallaghers didn't hold to the record for long, however, as Take That's resurrection gathered even more pace.

Yes, Gary, Jason, Mark and Howard are, wait for it, back for good. The foursome released their album The Circus a couple of weeks ago and at the time of writing, sales had just passed the one million mark. Fans bought up more than 600,000 tickets to their 2009 shows in a record shattering five hours.

Rumours abound Robbie Williams will rejoin the band next year, but whether that will happen remains to be seen. Robbie is also linked with X Factor, with Simon Cowell apparently dead set on having the Angels singer replace Dannii Minogue on the judging panel.

Finally, we head to Christmas as the 'battle' for the festive No 1 spot limps on.

We all know it's going to be X Factor winner Alexandra and her version of Hallelujah, although a backlash has propelled the Jeff Buckley version and the Leonard Cohen original into the upper echelons of the charts.

It's a fitting end to what's been an unpredictable year. Let's hope the industry stays in tune with the trends in 2009.