Unsurprising news, considering the state of the industry. I can’t say I ever agreed with the segregation of older (or “catalog”) albums, as if they were nursing home habitues who had no business mixing with the young. A continuing pleasure in my Billboard-obsessive days in junior high and high school was noting the likes of Led Zeppelin IV and Prince’s Controversy scraping the bottom of the Top 200, surrounded on either side by Teena Marie and Hooters albums. The interaction created a plausible narrative: people cared about the old and new with equal affection. A year in which Michael Jackson and the Beatles outsold their progeny means that the public’s aware of it too.
Tags: Music
