Best Greatest Hits Albums

[Trudi Miranda]

Beforecompiling the best songs by one's favorite musical artists took minutes, greatest hits vinyl albums and CDs were popular. It was usually money well spent to get an artist's most notable tunes in one collection from the 1960s to the early portion of this century.

New Order rose from the ashes of Joy Division. With it came an alternative dance/pop sound that was all the rage during the 1980s. The band's Substance release from 1987 featured all its prominent singles in 12-inch form and also housed one of its most beloved tracks, "True Faith," which had not previously been released on an album. The compilation also features hits "Bizarre Love Triangle," "Blue Monday," and re-recorded versions of "Temptation" and "Confusion." The album was intended to partner with Joy Division's singles compilation, also titled Substance, released in 1988.

A Chicago native, Jeff Mezydlo has professionally written about sports, entertainment and pop culture for parts of four decades. He was an integral member of award-winning sports sections at The Times of Northwest Indiana (Munster, Ind.) and Champaign (Ill.) News-Gazette, where he covered the NFL, PGA, LPGA, NCAA basketball, football and golf, Olympics and high school athletics. Jeff most recently spent 12 years in the editorial department at STATSPerform, where he also oversaw coverage of the English Premier League. A graduate of Northern Illinois University, Jeff's work has also appeared on such sites at Yahoo!, ESPN, Fox Sports, Sports Illustrated and NBA.com. However, if Jeff could do it again, he'd attend Degrassi Junior High, Ampipe High School and Grand Lakes University

It's time we reclaimed our favorite greatest hits albums and praised them for what they are: not the last word on a band, for sure, but an essential highlights reel that delivers pleasure after pleasure, with the least percentage of nonessential fat attached.

Erin Keane is Salon's Chief Content Officer. She is also on faculty at the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University and her memoir in essays, "Runaway: Notes on the Myths That Made Me," was named one of NPR's Books We Loved In 2022.

Copyright 2024 Salon.com, LLC. Reproduction of material from any Salon pages without written permission is strictly prohibited. SALON is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon.com, LLC. Associated Press articles: Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

A greatest hits album or best-of album is a type of compilation album that collects popular and commercially successful songs by a particular artist or band.[1] While greatest hits albums are typically supported by the artist, they can also be created by record companies without express approval from the original artist as a means to generate sales.[2] They are typically regarded as a good starting point for new fans of an artist, but are sometimes criticized by longtime fans as not inclusive enough or necessary at all.[3]

It is also common for greatest hits albums to include new recordings, remixes or unreleased alternate takes of the hit songs, plus other new material as bonus tracks to increase appeal for longtime fans (who might otherwise already own the recordings included). At times, a greatest hits compilation marks the first album appearance of a successful single that was never attached to a previous studio album. Greatest hits albums usually are released after an artist or band's contract with a major label is completed, they've been dropped or died, with next releases following on new labels.

The first greatest hits album was Johnny Mathis's Johnny's Greatest Hits, released in 1958.[4] The album collected eight of Mathis's charting singles, as well as three non-charting B-sides and an altogether new track. The album spent three weeks at the number one spot on Billboard's Best Selling Pop LP's chart. The greatest hits album format then gained popularity in the 1960s and 1970s among American and British rock and pop artists. One notable example was the Beach Boys 1974 album Endless Summer, which upon release was certified 3 platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. It propelled them from an opening act for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young to headlining their own tour in just a matter of weeks. Some artists were even popular enough to release multiple greatest hits albums during and after their career.

Greatest hits compilations were sometimes also released as 4-track 7" vinyl EPs. In the late 1960s, EMI Sweden released a series of greatest hits-EPs featuring artists such as The Supremes, Ray Charles and Louis Armstrong.[5]

By the 1990s, greatest hits albums were common for popular artists, with some artists even releasing the greatest hits album as a music video collection concurrently with the album. It also became a commercially viable option to boost popularity for artists with dwindling careers. Some bands refuse to release a greatest hits album, such as rock groups AC/DC, Tool, and Metallica. Garth Brooks had initially refused releasing one, but he eventually agreed to it in 1994 for a limited release[6] (the resulting record, The Hits, sold over ten million copies).

In 2000, Sony Music Entertainment launched their The Essential series, which collects singles and other career-defining tracks of artists licensed to Sony. The Essential Bob Dylan was the first in the series, and the company has since released dozens of albums in the series with other artists under their label. In addition to artist-specific collections, the series has also released genre-specific and themed albums, such as The Essential Christmas (collecting pop and rock covers of Christmas songs) or The Essential Australian Rock (collecting a specific regional output). In 2005, Universal Music Group launched a similar line, Gold, which collects artists' greatest hits onto two discs.

In the late 2000s and 2010s, digital downloads and music streaming services increased in popularity, which allow users to listen to their favorite tracks without the need of a greatest hits package. In 2016, Pitchfork said that "in the digital era, once a catalog enters a streaming service or an MP3 store, there's no need for a reissue and, therefore, there's no reason for a label to mine the vaults, searching for old music to make new again. Users can assemble their own personalized greatest hits playlists or just scan through an act's most accessed songs", which has led to greatest hits collections becoming redundant.[7]

Despite the popularity of streaming in the 2010s and early 2020s, some artists continued to issue physical greatest hits albums, including the White Stripes, Spoon, and the Weeknd.[8][9][2] Spoon lead singer Britt Daniel said he chose to compile 2019's Everything Hits at Once: The Best of Spoon out of an affinity for compilations such as Standing on a Beach by the Cure and Substance 1987 by New Order, which had introduced him to those artists in his youth, and to provide an official introduction to Spoon's catalog for new listeners.[2] Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand echoed those sentiments when describing the decision to release the band's 2022 Hits to the Head compilation, stating that "I have friends who believe you're somehow not a 'real' fan if you own a best of rather than a discography. I disagree. I think of my parents' record collection as a kid. I loved their compilation LPs. I am so grateful that they had Changes or Rolled Gold. Those LPs were my entrance point. My introduction."[10]

The concept of greatest hits compilations has been adapted to other media as well. In television, some shows have released compilations of their critically successful and highest-rated episodes to drive new viewers to watch a program, such as Family Guy's Freakin' Sweet Collection and South Park: The Hits. Several video game companies have re-released popular games for continued sales, sometimes with discounted prices: Sony's PlayStation has released games under their Greatest Hits series; Nintendo has re-released games under the Nintendo Selects label (formerly called "Player's Choice"); and Microsoft has re-released games under the Platinum Hits label. Some video game franchises have released greatest hits collections of their own content, such as Super Mario All-Stars, Sonic Mega Collection, and Guitar Hero Smash Hits.

You gather a dozen or so of an artist's best and biggest songs, slap them on a record and there you have it. But they're messed up all the time by overeager company suits who see a few extra dollars to be made by adding a new song or two, or by over-ambitious artists who believe that the 15-minute mini-opera they wrote about the guy who helped invent the circular saw deserves the space that should have gone to their only Top 10 hit.

The best greatest-hits albums deliver exactly what they promise: greatest hits. You won't find too much filler on the above gallery of the Top 10 Greatest Hits Albums. In fact, we'd go as far as to say that no classic-rock collection is complete without them.

3a8082e126