After a rough year marked by free-falling sales and industry uncertainty-likely only to be further fueled by the greater economic uncertainty-the majors are gearing up for an exhausting run of gigantic, big-name releases for the final two months of the year. Some of these are only rumored and likely won't make the 2008 cut-off (rap albums in particular are susceptible to delays, obviously), but the list of upcoming albums is daunting nonetheless:
Toby Keith
Guns N' Roses
Beyonce
T-Pain
Missy Elliot
Nickelback
Ludacris
Akon
Kanye West
Britney Spears
Ciara
Fall Out Boy
Kelly Clarkson
Eminem
Jay-Z
With so many big headlines in that list, the actual release of Chinese Democracy, the Eminem comeback, the inevitable critical excitement around Kanye West's latest, it will be interesting to see which of these big names slip through the cracks, or, for that matter, if any of them will live up to their lofty sales expectations.
