Big shock! CD sales in 2007 were down!

So the record industry is yet again quaking in it's white-suede winklepickers after album sales in 2007 were down 10.8% on 2006. Strip away compilations and soundtracks and that figure becomes even bleaker, with the gap increasing to a whopping 14.8%.

Record labels are blaming the popularity of downloads, copyright theft, deteriorating retail conditions and no doubt the summer floods, teenage murder rates and the assasination of Benazir Bhutto but surely nothing can escape the fact that almost all new music last year was...well a bit shit really.

It's a rarity but I'm actually inclined to agree with Paul Rees, editor of Q magazine and pernial smug git who said: "It would be hard to think of a real classic this year by a major artist other than Amy Winehouse. When you look at the state of the album charts, much of it is piffle."

It WAS piffle - piffle of the highest degree! Music in 2007 was souless, unemotional tosh spewed out in grand studios on movie-making budgets and squabbled over by marketing teams whose omnipresent bluetooth-headsets fail to suck the unit-shifting manifesto from behind their dead-eyes! Whew...

Winehouse aside, was there actually anything released in 2007 of merit? Take away the Kings of Leon's amazing album "Because Of The Times", Radiohead's return to form "In Rainbows", Nick Cave's Grinderman project and Kanye West's "Graduation" and the answer is firmly no!

The Mercury Music Prize was, as ever, a joke. Klaxons? Klaxons my arse. I've tried to avoid mentioning the dreaded 'nu-rave' but unfortunately the term (which is still as meaningless as ever) formed such a major part of the dross last year I fail to see how I can. Since when did it become law that all bands have to dress like racing cyclists? Call me cynical but I'm not convinced musicians in neon spandex will ever create a great album. Not in 1987 - not in 2007.

Oh and while I'm at it, an open-plee to the NME. In 2008, will you please, please refrain from your coverage of non-existent youth cults! Five gurning kids with glowsticks and their older brother's Paul Oakenfold album isn't a movement...it's a cry for help.

So what of 2008? What do we have to look forward to? Are we on the verge of an organic breakthrough of great music again? Erm...no.

Other than north-London's continually underated indie-folk minstrel Kid Harpoon it looks like we're stuck with more of the same rubbish as the last few years. There'll be more Brit-schooled-soul-pop from the depressingly clean-living Adele, not to mention the rebirth of sugar-sweet-pop-rock when the The Kooks return with their 'difficult second album'. If that doesn't sicken you enough, there are even rumours the Sex Pistols may finally destroy their myth once and for all by releasing a brand new album of original material...roll on 2009!

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