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Greatest Hits Album: Difference between revisions
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The very concept of the "greatest hits album" is a double-edged sword, as while the album is likely to contain the most ''financially successful'' of the artist's songs, each individual fan has a greater love of certain B-Sides and [[Album Filler]] that won't appear on the disc (and greater bias against the [[Black Sheep Hit]] that ''will'' inevitably be included). In hoping to appeal to the greatest number of fans, the album will end up completely pleasing no one. Also, there's the simple fact that most bands and artists suffering from [[Second Album Syndrome]] don't have enough hits in the can to truly justify an entire album thereof, and it may seem like they're scraping the bottom of the barrel as to what may qualify as a "hit".
Artists are of mixed feelings about these albums as well. Many artists resist releasing one for fear that once they do, their regular albums will begin to be ignored. Yet they are viewed as a necessary evil, as these provide an easy starting point for fans who are curious about a particular artist's work. Musicians and bands don't always get to decide when to release a greatest-hits album. If an artist is leaving the label and does not own his own back catalog, and if he is successful at all, the label ''will'' release a greatest-hits album - sometimes explicitly against the artist's wishes.
Sometimes the "Best of" title is used instead. This often reflects a less concentrated focus on chart hits - sometimes for legitimate reasons (e.g., album-oriented artists, influential artists with less commercial success or simply those whose career may not be best reflected solely by singles). Or it could be a poor excuse to cover up a lack of genuine hits. Sometimes neither title is used (e.g., [[Dire Straits]]' compilation, "Money for Nothing"). To add perceived weight a more scholarly phrase such as "Anthology" is often used. This can be justified where the artist has had a long career but is equally often just a pretentious affectation.
As suggested by The Brunching Shuttlecocks, an easy way to determine the actual neccesity of a Greatest Hits Album is to divide the number of songs on the album that actually charted, by the number of songs included on the album. Artists like [[The Beatles]], [[Billy Joel]], [[Madonna]] and [[The Beach Boys]] will bat nearly 1.000, whereas groups who have released Greatest Hits albums unneccesarily (i.e., [[One-Hit Wonder|One Hit Wonders]]) will score far lower (e.g,: Kajagoogoo has hit ratio on its greatest hits album of 0.059, Timbuk 3 has 0.071, ''The Best of Tiffany'' scores 0.083, ''The Best of Martika'' 0.067 and so on.) The most egregious example may be ''The Best of Shaquille O'Neal'', which has 12 songs, none of which could legitimately be considered a hit, for a ratio of zero.
The ordering of songs can be either random or chronological (though for double-disk compilations, [[Distinct Double Album|it can get experimental]]).
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** Tsukishima Kirari Starring Kusumi Koharu (Morning Musume).
** Melon Kinenbi.
* The [[Eagles]]' ''Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975)'' is the best-selling album in U.S. history (tied with [[Michael Jackson]]'s ''Thriller''), and third world-wide selling more than 42 million copies.
* [[Queen]]'s ''Greatest Hits'' is the best-selling album of all time in Britain, with their ''Greatest Hits II'' being number 8. Since then, Queen has released four more albums, including the double-platinum ''Absolute Greatest'' in 2009.
* ''[[ABBA]] Gold'' is the third best selling album of all time in Britain.
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** And AC/DC has two soundtrack albums that double as compilations, ''[[Maximum Overdrive|Who Made Who]]'' and ''[[Iron Man (film)|Iron Man 2]]''.
* Cockney Rejects, Mrs. Miller, Alien Ant Farm, and Graveyard BBQ have had ''Greatest Hits'' as the title of their respective debut albums.
** The Cockney Rejects actually named their first three albums ''Greatest Hits,'' Volumes 1, 2 and 3.
* ''The Best of Young MC'' is notable for basically being his first album, with a different title, and three fewer songs - in other words, Young MC ran out of creativity 10/13 of the way through his first album, but it was deemed a greatest hits album was necessary.
* Creedence Clearwater Revival released two compilation albums in the late 70's after the band broke up, Chronicle (which was re-released in the early 90's) that contained all their big hits like Proud Mary, Bad Moon Rising, Down on the Corner, etc., and Chronicle II, which contained a lot of lesser known hits from the end of their career, as well as Album Filler.
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* [[Shakira]] got her own Greatest Hits in Spanish after four albums... but only songs from the latter two made it, because the two first were [[Old Shame|commercial failures full of]] [[Executive Meddling]]...
* J-pop group Glay, after ''two'' Best Of albums (one of them double!), released a two-volume, two-disc-each compilation titled ''rare collectives'' compiling all the B-sides of their singles to date (most of which hadn't made into any album), plus some live recordings and a couple of version and cooperations with other artists.
* [[The Beatles]] had several: first the Red (1962-1966) and Blue (1967-1970) albums (recently re-released), then ''20 Greatest Hits'' (which never made CD), the singles-only ''Past Masters'' (re-released with the 2009 remastered albums as it compiles everything that wasn't released on an album including important stuff like "I Want To Hold Your Hand" and "Hey Jude"), and finally 2000's ''1'', the best selling album of [[Turn of the Millennium/
** As early as 1966, their British label (Parlophone) released one of these: ''A Collection of Beatles Oldies''.
** [[John Lennon]] released one greatest hits album while he was alive, ''Shaved Fish''. That one was infamous for having short versions of songs that never charted. A fair percentage of his post-mortem releases are also greatest hits albums. "The John Lennon Collection" was a bit strange because half the songs on it were from ''Double Fantasy,'' and most of John's half of ''Double Fantasy'' was on that album.
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* Despite the fact they never actually had a hit song, [[The Velvet Underground]] have two of these. [http://www.amazon.com/Best-Velvet-Underground-Words-Music/dp/B000001FR9/ref=sr_1_27?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1231629458&sr=1-27 One] is considered generally inferior due to picking almost all of their most conventional songs; [http://www.amazon.com/20th-Century-Masters-Millennium-Underground/dp/B00004YX3S/ref=pd_sim_m_16 the second] was more well-received.
* Progressive metal band [[Dream Theater]] released a compilation to satisfy a contract with their now former label. Since the band only had one radio hit (the rock radio favorite "Pull Me Under") and have built their career without 'hit singles', the album is jokingly titled ''Dream Theater's Greatest Hit (and 21 other pretty cool songs'').
** They also use some [http://www.dreamtheaterarg.com.ar/imagenes/discos/greatesthit.jpg clever red highlighting] to quite literally [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|sneak some crap past the radar]] as to their thoughts on the matter.
* An interesting case: the biggest hits of the [[Red Hot Chili Peppers]]' EMI years (which were not noted for being much of a success) were collected on an album after the success of ''Blood Sugar Sex Magik''; the result was entitled ''[[Lampshade Hanging|What Hits?]]''
* [[Jefferson Airplane]] called their first best-of release ''The Worst of Jefferson Airplane''.
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* [[Bruce Springsteen]]'s first greatest hits album, although a huge seller, was widely criticized by hardcore fans for containing too many new songs (four of them), causing some huge hits like "I'm on Fire" and "Cover Me" to be excluded.
* [[Michael Jackson]] had several of these.
** ''HIStory - Past, Present and Future Book I'' (1995) drew criticism for the way it was compiled. It was a [[Distinct Double Album]], disc one consisting of greatest hits and disc two consisting of new material. This irked many people who wanted one but not both; casual fans didn't care about the new material, while hardcore fans already owned all the hits. The hits disc was reissued as a separate album in 2001, but people who want the other tracks (especially the singles from the second disc like "You Are Not Alone" and "Stranger in Moscow") still have to buy the full two-disc set. It's worth noting that Sony and Jackson's original plan was just to bring out a greatest hits set, but after the first round of child molestation allegations against him he came up with a ton of new material.
** ''Number Ones'' (2003) was his answer to [[The Beatles]] and [[Elvis Presley]] all-#1-hits compilations, though the American version had to stretch beyond the U.S. and British charts to include songs from ''Invincible''. It also included a new song in "One More Chance" that flopped in the U.S. as Jackson was formally charged with child molestation just as the album hit shelves; it did make #1 in [[wikipedia:One More Chance (Michael Jackson song)|a few countries]], though. The album didn't make waves until the week after Jackson's death, when it [http://www.billboard.com/#/news/michael-jackson-breaks-billboard-charts-1003989310.story outsold] the album topping the Billboard 200 (at the time, albums over 18 months old only entered the Catalog Charts; MJ's post-death popularity and the success of the Beatles remasterings caused that rule to be dropped).
** ''The Ultimate Collection'' (2004) was a four-disc hits-and-rarities box set, plus a DVD of a 1992 concert.
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* [["Weird Al" Yankovic]] didn't include much previously unavailable material on his "The Essential "Weird Al" Yankovic" two-disc set, only including a couple mixes of songs not on the original CDs (i.e. the extra-gory version of "The Night Santa Went Crazy" and the single release of UHF), but he did manage to nearly jam-pack each completely full.
** Al also had ''The Food Album'' and ''The TV Album'', with his songs into those themes. Also, his Greatest Hits Volume 2 featured his Crash Test Dummies parody "Headline News", which had only been previously released as a single and the long-out-of-print "Al in the Box" compilation.
* Oddly, Chamillionaire managed to have a greatest hits collection '''before he released his debut studio album'''. This is because of the enormous number of mixtapes he released and appeared on before that.
* [[Type O Negative]] had two "best of" albums, one compiled by the band themselves, and another put together by their by-then former record label, both largely covering the same material. In line with the band's occasional use of [[Self-Deprecation]], the former was called ''The Least Worst of Type O Negative'', and started with a completely silent filler track from one of their albums ([[Don't Explain the Joke|the implication being that]] they considered ''39 seconds of silence'' to be among their best work).
* [[Cirque Du Soleil]] has released three such albums so far.
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** A particularly [[Scrappy]] example is the ''Edward The Great'' compilation. Despite the commendable cover artwork it adds to the Maiden library, the album is severely unbalanced: a full half of the ''Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son'' album is included, yet not a single cut with original singer Di'Anno's voice made it onto the compilation.
* [[Aerosmith]] has released ''nine'' so far. Two were released by the recording companies after the band was out (Columbia's ''Gems'' and [[Geffen]]'s ''Young Lust'').
* [[Reba McEntire]], one of the greatest stars in [[Country Music]] history, has released three conventional "Greatest Hits" albums and a three-disc showstopper entitled ''Reba: 50 Greatest Hits''. And that's just for starters. She's also released CDs containing only her #1 singles, and then there was the mandatory "Millennium Collection." This is fully justified, as she has had no less than '''eighty''' Top 40 singles during her career, ''thirty'' of which peaked at #1.
* [[The Residents]] subverted this with ''Our Finest Flowers''. Rather than releasing a standard greatest hits album, they took a long-standing tradition of messing around with existing music, and applied it to their own. The result was an album full of brand new songs that consisted of mashed-up songs from previous albums. [[Word of God]] tells us that this happened because a Resident vomited on a track listing for a greatest hits album that was being planned.
** Played relatively straight with their later compilation ''Petting Zoo'': The only things approaching "hits" the band has to begin with are their covers of [[Hank Williams|"Kaw-Liga"]] and [[The Rolling Stones|"Satisfaction"]], neither of which were included, but the album did attempt to showcase the band's more accessible moments in reverse chronological order. They even pulled a variation on the practice of including new songs as fan bait - the first two tracks served as a preview of ''Demons Dance Alone'', which came out later that same year.
* [[Van Halen]] released one before reuniting with David Lee Roth (''Best Of Volume I'') and another reuniting with Sammy Hagar (''Best of Both Worlds'', which was double to be more comprehensive... but had a random tracklisting that frequently alternates Sammy and Dave).
* [[Oasis]] had two, one with an active band and songs picked by Noel Gallagher (which explains why all but four tracks are [[First Installment Wins|from the first two albums]] or B-sides of those songs, and [[Creator Backlash|the third album has no tracks]]), and another after disbanding, with the singles per se.
* [[Yes]] have 7 "official" greatest hits albums, many of them dedicated to a specific stint on a label. Three or four of them are double-disc comilations, some of which are repackagings. Many of them were released after their last studio album, 2000's ''Magnification'', by Rhino Records, who owns their Atlantic Records recordings. That's not to count the boxed sets and "friends of Yes" best -ofs, or the unofficial collections.
* The 1974 [[Supergroup|Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young]] album ''So Far'' consists of songs from the ''two'' studio LP's they'd recorded to that point (1969's ''Crosby, Stills & Nash'' and 1970's ''Déjà Vu''), plus the breakout single ''Ohio'' and its B-side ''Find the Cost of Freedom''. Sounds like a totally unnecessary endeavor, right? But it bats a respectable .454 on the Brunching Shuttlecocks metric (5 of the 11 songs on it hit the top 40), and fans were so eager for CSNY that ''So Far'' reached #1 on the charts and sold its way into Gold Record status.
* Cracker had the two-disc ''Garage D'or'' - the first disc had most of their singles, while the second was b-sides, compilation tracks, and unreleased material, rounded out with live versions of a few fan favorites. Later on there would also be an unusual case of dueling Greatest Hits albums: The band had recorded ''Greatest Hits Redux'', an album of studio re-recordings of their hits that they planned to release on an independent label, then they found out about Virgin, their old label, planning to release ''Get On With It: The Best Of Cracker'' without their involvement. They brazenly put the re-recorded versions out earlier than planned to compete with the regular greatest hits album.
* [[The Corrs]] have ''three'' ''and'' a complete collection [[Boxed Set]] of all 5 albums which released in 2011. Although once you start adding the high quality live albums and unplugged albums which have their own specific songs it looks far more reasonable. A buyer also gets more value for money from each subsequent release. The first was made after their 3rd album was released and has 18 songs. The second ''Dreams'' contained 21 songs and was released after their 4th and 5th albums were released as well as several unplugged and live albums. ''The Works'' was released as a three CD set with 56 tracks.
* [[Faith No More]] had a few after the band split, with the most recent, done to promote their reunion, mixing all names used for such compilations for parody's sake: ''The Very Best Definitive Ultimate Greatest Hits Collection''.
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* [[Starflyer 59]]'s greatest-hits album ''Easy Come, Easy Go'' almost seemed lazy in its track choices. It featured exactly three songs from each of the band's five prior albums--specifically, the first two tracks plus either track 3 or track 4. Fortunately, it also came with a second disc, filled with b-sides and live tracks, and the liner notes had an impressively thorough history of the band.
* [[Jars of Clay]]'s ''Furthermore'' was practically a greatest-hits collection, but it was completely new recordings. Disc one featured stripped-down acoustic versions of the songs, and disc two featured live versions. Five years later, they ended up releasing a more conventional ''Greatest Hits''.
* [[David Bowie]] has had ''many'' compilations assembled over the course of his career.
** For years, the best-known compilations were ''Changesonebowie'' (1976) and ''Changestwobowie'' (1981). When a rerelease program of Bowie's 1969-80 catalog was initiated in 1990, ''Changesbowie'' -- the cover of which incorporated the ''Changesonebowie'' cover photo -- arrived; it also included songs from 1983's ''Let's Dance'' and 1984's ''Tonight'' and instead of "Fame" (his first U.S. Number One) included the then-new rearrangement "Fame '90".
** 1989's ''Sound + Vision'' box set covered his career from 1969-1980 and originally included a Video CD (later CD-Rom) of three live numbers and the "Ashes to Ashes" video on top of its three audio CDs. A 2003 reissue turned it into a four-CD set with material from 1982-93 and a 1997 live B-side added.
** 1993's ''The Singles Collection'' [[wikipedia:The Singles Collection (David Bowie album)|wasn't exactly truth in advertising]] -- a bunch of the included songs weren't singles or, if they were, the actual single edits.
** Three best-ofs available separately or as ''The Platinum Collection'' specifically focus on 1969-74 (mostly his [[Glam Rock]] period), 1975-79 (blue-eyed [[Soul]] and [[Kraut Rock]] periods), and 1980-87 ([[New Wave]] and pop rock periods plus soundtrack work). The last one is notable for bringing together single versions of his movie theme songs from this period, which at five manage to total more than the number of tracks from his studio albums ''Tonight'' and ''Never Let Me Down'' (four) that are included.
** 2002's ''Best of Bowie'' had [[wikipedia:Best of Bowie|20 different versions prepared]] for 21 different countries, plus a two-disc DVD set released alongside it.
* [[Brad Paisley]] fought against the release of one for several years, because he thought that it was unfair to make an album composed of something that the fans already have. The label finally compromised and let him release a two-disc set which features his greatest hits on one disc and an assortment of live tracks on the other.
* Country music artist Phil Vassar did an interesting variation. Since he had several hits as a songwriter before he had any as a singer (and some for at least a year after his singing career began), his Greatest Hits includes both his own songs and his versions of some of his pre-fame songs (namely "I'm Alright" by Jo Dee Messina, "My Next Thirty Years" and "For a Little While" by [[Tim McGraw]] and "Little Red Rodeo" by Collin Raye).
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* J-pop singer Nana Tanimura released her debut album four years after her first single, having released ''seven' more singles following, two of which were double a-sides. Her debut album wound up being a best-of with a number of b-sides tossed in for good measure.
* [[Camper Van Beethoven]] have ''[[Long Title|Popular Songs of Great Enduring Strength and Beauty]]'', which covers their career up until their initial breakup; Since reuniting, they've had two more proper albums, but presumably only one of those would count anyway, because the other was a [[Cover Album]] of [[Fleetwood Mac]]'s ''Tusk''. The band couldn't license anything from ''Key Lime Pie'' and ''Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart'', the two albums they released while on Virgin, so the album uses brand new re-recordings of four of it's songs.
* [[Marilyn Manson]]'s ''Lest We Forget: The Best Of'', which covers the first ten years of their career. Songs were generally mixed louder than on the albums (although not to the point of the [[Loudness War]]), and [[Fading Into the Next Song]] was occasionally used where it wasn't originally. There were a couple of non-album singles ("The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell" and "Tainted Love") and a newly recorded cover of [[Depeche Mode]]'s "Personal Jesus", but charting single "I Don't Like The Drugs (But The Drugs Like Me)" was absent. At the time they called it a "farewell album", but after a gap of a few years they kept releasing music.
* [[The Police]]'s first greatest hits album, ''Every Breath You Take: The Classics'', got a little bit of a mixed reception for having a few of their hits absent and including a new, drastically different version of "Don't Stand So Close To Me" instead of the original. It got deleted and replaced with the similarly titled ''Every Breath You Take: The Singles'', which was almost identical but included the original "Don't Stand So Close To Me", relegating "Don't Stand So Close To Me 86" to the end of the album alongside [[The Not-Remix]] of "Message In A Bottle". There's been a few more greatest hits albums since, including a two cd collection called ''[[Self-Titled Album|The Police]]'', and ''The Very Best Of Sting And The Police'', which of course mixed Sting solo hits in with his Police material. The original version of that last one featured a remix of "Roxanne" by Puff Daddy (probably to capitalize on Puff Daddy [[Sampled Up|sampling up]] "Every Breath You Take" the previous year), while a later reissue ditched the remix and added more previously released songs - three by Sting and one by The Police.
* The Cult have two official best of albums, ''Pure Cult'' and ''High Octane Cult'', but both are pretty much identical in terms of song selection. The only difference is that ''High Octane Cult'' adds two new songs and "Star", the only single they'd released in the three years between the two compilations. "Star" would later show up on a re-release of ''Pure Cult'', but those two new tracks wouldn't.
* [[Ministry]]'s ''Greatest Fits'' and ''Rantology'': One includes the original or single versions of most of it's songs and also features "What About Us?" (originally from ''[[A.I.: Artificial Intelligence]]'') and a slightly extended version of the [[Black Sabbath|"Supernaut"]] cover originally credited to 1,000 Homo DJs. About half of the other is new remixes or "updates" of old songs, and at the time "The Great Satan" was an exclusive track, but the same version later appeared on ''Rio Grande Blood''. Neither, of course, include anything from their [[Old Shame]] [[Synth Pop]] period.
* Duck Sauce subverts this by naming their first (and only) EP, ''Greatest Hits''.
* Similarly, Reggie And The Full Effect called their debut ''Greatest Hits 1984-1987''. Part of the joke is also that the album was released in 1999 - the band didn't even ''exist'' in 1984.
* [[Silverchair]]'s ''The Best Of, Volume 1'', which was put out without the band's approval once they left Sony, and thus only covers the first three albums. It came in a couple of different editions - one included a separate disc of b-sides and rarities, while the other crammed the hits and most of those same non-album tracks onto the same cd.
* [[Jaga Jazzist]] parodied this: Their alleged "greatest hits" album, ''Jævla Jazzist Grete Stitz'' was the first thing they every released. For extra irony points, they now consider it [[Old Shame]].
* [[Green Day]]'s ''International Superhits'', which covered their singles from 1994 to 2000 - presumably their two pre-major label albums weren't counted because of licensing issues, but those didn't have any proper singles anyway. The album has every song they released as a single during this period in chronological order, and also starts off with a pair of token new songs.
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