DARE TO DREAM PART II

My friends, whoda thunk it?

As the holiday season heats up, the Syco/Columbia matron of the U.K. heartlands and Decca’s blind Italian tenor will battle it out for the top spot on HITS Top 50, each of them flirting with the 350k level. Can that figure go even higher? Stay tuned.

Building on a number of TV appearances this week, including Oprah, Leno, CBS Morning Show and Larry King, Bocelli, now #1 at iTunes, is picking up some serious steam, while Boyle has strong momentum carrying over from her chart-topping, 700k debut.

The new releases taper off some before the year-end rush, with Jive/JLG’s R. Kelly album, Untitled, the biggest, expected to debut in the 95-105k range.

19/Jive/JLG Idol contestant Allison Iraheta is the next-highest newcomer, in the 25-30k range for her label debut, Just Like You.

Veteran UTP/Atlantic rapper Juvenile is both Cocky and Confident that he’ll end up doing 20-25k, the same total expected for Rhino’s Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel soundtrack and Warner Bros.’ Very Best of Enya album.

Next Tuesday (12/8), it’s all about Jive/JLG’s Chris Brown, Mailboat’s Jimmy Buffett, Virgin’s Thirty Seconds to Mars, Columbia’s Glee Vol. 2, Priority/EMI’s Snoop Dogg, Blackground/Interscope’s Timbaland, Columbia’s Clipse and S-Curve’s We the Kings.

The market was up 34% vs. last week, down 12% vs. same week last year and still down 13% year to date.

You may now return to pondering how many more irons there are in Tiger Woods’ golf bag.