Thursday 27 November 2008

The top 10 turkeys of 2008

If there's been one unifying theme to 2008, it's that there really are no sure things. No one - not even his label - expected Lil Wayne to sell a million copies of Tha Carter III in a week. Everyone suspected Usher's Here I Stand would be a massive blockbuster. As you probably know by now, only one of those statements actually proved to be true.

So, in celebration of Thanksgiving, and to the year that was (or, more specifically, wasn't), I've written a list of the year's 10 biggest turkeys. These are albums and artists that disappointed commercially, critically or - more often than not - both. Misfires. Miscalculations. Missteps from the usually surefooted.

2. Mariah Carey

It's difficult to think of an album that flopped harder in 2008 than Carey's E=MC2, which, given the fact that it's currently the sixth-best-selling album of the year, is saying something about just how impossibly high the expectations were. The long-in-the-works follow-up to her career-reviving The Emancipation of Mimi, it debuted at #1 and has sold nearly 1.2 million copies to date.

But the fact remains that no one seems particularly excited about it - especially not Carey, who promoted it with a ho-hum interview on "Oprah" and a downright bizarre video for the first single "Touch My Body", which featured "30 Rock" actor Jack McBrayer wailing on a fake guitar, wearing a Viking helmet and parading around with a unicorn.

As a follow-up, she married actor Nick Cannon and basically disappeared from public life. Neither of the three subsequent singles from the album did much of anything, and to date, E=MC2 has sold less than one-fifth of what Emancipation did. Oh, and her big year was topped off with the announcement that her much-discussed film "Tennessee" will not open in December but rather, in February. Always a good sign.

(excerpt from VH1 News)



COMMENTS
There are not yet comments to this article.

Only registrated members can post a comment.
© MCArchives 1998-2024 (26 years!)
NEWS
MESSAGEBOARD