Now – The Christmas Album

Now That's What I Call Music - The Christmas Album
Compilation album by Various Artists
Released	1985
Recorded	Various times
Genre	Rock/Pop
Length	57:53 (CD)
Label	Virgin / EMI

Now – The Christmas Album is a compilation album released in 1985. The album is part of the (UK) Now! series, and collects popular Christmas songs of the last few decades. It reached number 1 on the UK Albums Chart for two weeks, in between two runs of Now That's What I Call Music 6. The album has since been superseded by subsequent two-disc and later three-disc releases in the 2000s.

The track listing above is for the original 18 track release of this album. The above running order is for The Christmas Album. Later copies had only 17 tracks, as the Queen song was removed.

The compact disc edition had 16 tracks, as John Lennon and Greg Lake songs were omitted.

The name of the compilation varied depending on what format it was purchased on.

The LP was called The Christmas Album, the cassette was named The Christmas Tape and the CD was known as The Christmas Compact Disc. The CD of this compilation was released a year after the original album in 1986 - it is also very collectable.

A new version of the compilation, with a new track list and artwork inspired by the original, is set for release on 26 November 2016 on vinyl only.

As part of the promotion for Now That's What I Call Music! 10, Virgin and EMI did a limited run of sampler cassettes which were sent to record stores prior to release in October 1987 to generate hype. "Now - The Instore Tape" features snippets of each track from "NOW 10" on one side and tracks from "Now The Christmas Album" (which for the first time had been issued on CD in 1986) on the other.

Each track on the cassette was introduced by David "The Kid" Jensen who was the voice-over for the NOW adverts at the time. A full description and pictures are on Discogs

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Wikipedia