Surprisingly, this year's album charts have been dominated by two debut releases from 2009 – and both from dynamic young female artists. Lady Gaga's The Fame and Florence and the Machine's Lungs have continued to sell in big numbers as the two singers have established themselves as part of the cultural landscape.
Initially Gaga and Florence might seem like polar opposites, yet the pair have much in common: their strongly defined images, passionate live performances and forceful personalities have really connected with audiences, especially young women. Their campaigns have also been relentless: both albums have been re-released in deluxe packages and The Fame has yielded an impressive seven top-20 hits, while Florence's You've Got The Love has proved to be an endlessly adaptable anthem, performed with Dizzee Rascal at the Brits and the xx at Glastonbury.
"Lungs was arguably the soundtrack to this year's summer festivals," says HMV's music manager John Hirst. "Festivals have certainly become an important platform for albums, particularly in the past five years or so. It helps they are now so widely broadcast, and every time an artist is seen on TV stealing the show, we tend to see a huge sales spike online or in our stores." He cites Muse and Jay-Z as other beneficiaries of the festival phenomenon.
As for the continuing success of The Fame, Hirst reckons it's been "fuelled in no small measure by Lady Gaga's brilliantly outrageous publicity coups – although clearly there are some fantastic songs on there too".
The UK's best-selling male artist of 2010 is Paolo Nutini, whose second album Sunny Side Up – again, originally released in 2009 – has shifted impressively without the need for hit singles thanks to the Scot's brand of easy listening, retro-leaning rock-soul. Another twentysomething looking back on a successful year is east Londoner Plan B. Formerly a confrontational rapper, Plan B's transformation into a falsetto soul crooner on The Defamation of Strickland Banks was this year's shrewdest career move.
Another artist to undergo a successful reinvention was Eminem. It was feared that the Detroit rapper – one of the biggest-selling solo artist of the early noughties – might never record again after apparently retiring from music to battle his addiction to prescription drugs. His 2009 comeback album, Relapse, received mixed reviews, but this year's Recovery has re-established Eminem at the top of the rap game.
"I think Eminem's success has something to do with an increased willingness to plug into what's been going on around him in the US charts," says Q magazine's senior editor Matt Mason. "Rather than put out another album of his rhymes over beats dominated by Dr Dre, he's drafted in producers who've become just as well-known for their R&B productions as for their hip-hop work." The result was Love the Way You Lie, a number one hit that featured Rihanna. The track has been powering sales of the album in recent weeks, according to Hirst.
Traditional rock groups generally haven't performed so well in 2010, although Kings of Leon are enjoying another huge hit with their fifth album, Come Around Sundown, which was released last month. Scottish rock trio Biffy Clyro capitalised on their passionate live following with big sales for their fifth album Only Revolutions while AC/DC's Iron Man 2 soundtrack (essentially a greatest hits compilation) did particularly well given that the veteran Aussie rockers refuse to make any of their output available digitally.
Two young British bands really captured the imagination of the record-buying public in 2010. Mumford & Sons have led the "nu-folk" revival into the mainstream with Sigh No More, an album of rousing, banjo–assisted singalongs that became instant festival anthems. Meanwhile the captivating eponymous debut album by the xx – who beat the Mumfords to the prestigious Mercury prize in September – has been a slow-burning success, with its beautifully atmospheric music stealthily infiltrating our lives via countless TV show soundtracks. "I even heard them on Newsnight!" says Phil Matcham of the Official Charts Company. "Winning the Mercury prize will certainly help, but there is a definite undercurrent of popular interest in the band."
Mason believes that "these days, having your song played in a trail that immediately precedes an episode of EastEnders is probably as effective as being on the Radio 1 A-list". The xx themselves remain charmingly bemused by the popularity of an album they recorded on a tiny budget in a converted garage. Yet however many karaoke-style albums are sold by the cast of Glee or X Factor-assisted pop puppets, the xx remain the real sound of 2010.
