Whatever Happened to Greatest Hits Albums?

POP FIX | Professor of Rock

Spotify Playlist: https://bit.ly/GreatestHitsSpotify

Today I’m starting a new segment that I call Records of a Lost Art. Where we’ll discuss a song or album that is truly under appreciated or even a concept or mainstay has disappeared from our culture, hence the title. Today I want to talk about something that was once a major staple of the music industry and each and every on of our lives: the greatest hit album.
Spotify Playlist:

Back in the day, the greatest hits album was one of the great treasures of my youth and I would guess it was also a hallmark of most of you. Because listening to music before Spotify and iTunes, even Napster was a completely different experience for the generations that came before. Before everything was in the cloud and at everyone’s fingertips whereas now it’s instant gratification back in the day, you had to go buy a CD, a record or a cassette. and those things cost actual money. Anywhere from 8 buck to 18 bucks. When I first starting working… minimum wage was about 3 dollars and 80 cents My allowance was even worse. like 5 bucks a week for my daily chores so you figure it would take 5-6 hours of hard work to earn enough to buy just one album.

Early on in music discovery, the greatest hits album was the holy grail. I want to celebrate this lost art. The Greatest Hits album. I used to love to read the liner notes because It would Normally have an extensive essay and also list the chart positions and pictures of their other albums and would sometimes leave out it a hit or two, which just made me long to save up for their other records. For our generation, it was true wonder, ultimate discovery and now that’s gone.

6 Fleetwood Mac Greatest hits album. With it’s beautiful green cover. I mean the first four songs were Rhiannon Don’t Stop, Go You Own Way, and Hold Me. Are you for real? Dreams and Sara are still haunting my soul to this very day.

5 Michael Jackson History vinyl album. I remember I was working construction the summer after my senior year in a state 600 miles away from the town I grew up in and I was counting down the days for this one, because not only did it have many of the classics from, Off the Wall, Thriller, Bad and Dangerous, it also had a second set of all new songs led by the blazing duet with his sister Janet, Scream and his version of Come Together.

4 Prince the Hits 1 and 2 greatest hits album. This was a goldmine and it knocked me senseless when I bought it, because of course I knew all of the hits i’d loved from the radio and from the albums I had in Purple Rain and Around the World in a Day but I wasn’t very familiar with the early stuff from Controversy For you or Dirty Mind and those songs rattled my brain and deepened my respect for Prince and helped me grasp his unparalleled artistry: it drove me to go get everything he ever released and it had so many great cuts that hadn’t been available before that are now some of my favorites like Pink Cashmere and his live version of Nothing Compares to You.

3 Journey’s Greatest Hits album. There’s a reason this set sells over 500,000 units a year, has logged well over a thousand weeks on the chart and will not drop out of the catalog charts maybe ever. Song for song, it’s the Muhammed Ali of greatest hits albums. You can’t beat it. You can’t.
Side one alone has: Only the Young, Don’t Stop Believin’ Wheel in the Sky, Faithfully, and Anyway You Want it. I listened to this album every day for like three years.

2 The Beatles Red and Blue vinyl. Now my parents had this on vinyl and it was played in the background of my toddler years. I remember every song, in the exact order for both albums. The red which covers 1962-1966 and the blue which covers 1967-1970. What’s great is that they released this on CD in 1993 when I was a junior in high school and I bought my own copy. What was once my parents’ had become mine. my music. As a little boy I was partial to the red album. Didn’t care too much for the blue with the exception of Hey Jude and Let It Be. Or should I say, my mind wasn’t evolved enough to understand it’s genius. but as a teenager It switched. It was Strawberry Fields Forever and a Day in the lIfe and I Am the Walrus.

1 Billy Joel Greatest Hits Volume 1 and 2 vinyl record. Personally this is my Godfather. It’s my Picasso. I will treasure it forever because of how hard I worked to get it. Billy Joel is my favorite artist of all time and for many sentimental reasons.

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