Through the 80s and 90s, the market was ravenous for hit compilation series like Now That's What I Call Music
Growing up in the 70s, the advent of K-Tel's telly-advertised compilation albums was the answer to any young pop-picker's dream. Every three months they'd appear in shops with the mouth-watering promise, "20 Original Hits - 20 Original Artists". Not only were K-Tel compilations the only affordable pipeline to the chart-stormers of the day, they finally put an end to the enormously complicated practice of children recording songs off Top of the Pops with cheap and malfunctioning tape-recorders, bodies pressed to the door in case mum barged in halfway through Bowie's Rebel Rebel and piped up with: "Dinner's ready, but not before you've tidied your room."
Through the 80s and 90s, the market remained ravenous for hit compilation series like Now That's What I Call Music and for themed anthologies such as The Best ... Album in the World. Even if you already possessed some of the music contained therein, you'd still more than likely come out on top of the deal. Compilations were part of the rich fabric of music buying and it was unthinkable that their appeal would ever fade.
Then something revolutionary occurred. Downloading (both legal and otherwise) happened along, as did the iPod (arguably the greatest invention since the kettle). Almost overnight, everyone and his uncle were able to assemble and customize their own epic compilations containing up to 15,000 songs. You'd have thought that this development would have sounded the death knell for the traditional big label compilation album. But still they keep coming. Just this morning, my postman delivered a CD entitled Capital Gold's Legendary Labels: 45 Of The Greatest Tracks Of All Time. Enticing eh? Well, it might have been enticing a few years ago when the price of admission would have been justified by that handful of tracks one didn't already own. No longer. To doubly ensure that this baffling release shapes up as a must-avoid proposition, it commits the usual faux-pas in taking a cover-all-bases approach to the hits compilation by pairing The Supremes' Baby Love with Bros's When Will I Be Famous, Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues with Robson & Jerome's Unchained Melody. Blimey, I know we're all supposed to have immeasurably broad tastes these days. But surely this is taking the piss.
In these times when all the music we could ever want is available at the click of a mouse (give it six months and tunes will be pouring out of the taps), surely 45 Of The Greatest Tracks Of All Time is among the very last of its breed. How long can it be before the compilation album becomes a nostalgic relic that we look back on with the ironic fondness now afforded, say, the Ronco Bottle Chopper, which enabled one to make a highly attractive vase by lopping the top off a bottle of orange squash? If so, should we be lamenting the fact?
Time might well be up for the compilation but it's not too late to nominate your favourite of all time. Swerving unapologetically off the major label/hits path, I'd like to suggest Lipstick Traces, the companion CD to the Greil Marcus book of the same name. Any compilation that has the wit and nerve to bring arch Dadaist Tristan Tzara, Marie Osmond and Slits together on one CD is alright with me.
