When there isn't something new to sell you might as well start selling something old again, and music outlets are doing just that. Greatest hits collections are popping up everywhere from everyone: Barenaked Ladies? Smashing Pumpkins? William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy? I can't make these things up.
And you can't avoid them. CDNOW is hyping hundreds of greatest hits CDs at only $9.99, insisting that now is the time to "stock up" while hinting at upcoming gift-giving events. (A lesson: don't listen to CDNOW's advice. Air Supply's Greatest Hits Live: Now and Forever strikes me as a pretty baffling wedding present). Moreover, these discs appeal to all kinds of people - from teenagers just getting into classic rock, to collectors that must have everything, to aging hipsters in the throes of nostalgia, to the very cheap.
Why not? There are a lot of incentives to get a compilation rather than an album. Buying a greatest hits CD is much cheaper than the old-fashioned route of collecting a band's entire catalog, and far less risky if you're just trying something out. Led Zeppelin's Complete Studio Recordings (complete with spiffy cube case and good biographical info) will hit you for at least $100, while the two-volume set of Early Days and Latter Days runs closer to $30. Buy three times as much music and save space and reduce the risk of costly disappointment? What a bargain!
But the diehards will tell you that it isn't really a bargain because you're not getting the full experience, and they're right. So much gets lost in the transition between actual albums and greatest hits ones that it can be hard to stomach.
Greatest hits collections take songs out of context and cram them together onto one disc, forgetting that albums are works of art just as songs are. Look at the Early Days:Best of Led Zeppelin collection that came out in 1999 (and spent eight weeks on the Billboard top 100). It includes five of Led Zeppelin 4's eight tracks - including the first four tracks - yet it doesn't even put them in their original order. Why? Because the label wanted to close Volume 1 with "Stairway to Heaven," the most famous of all Zeppelin's songs.
An album stands alone as a concrete artistic statement. It holds certain songs - all in a certain style, recorded at a specific time with specific people - and it puts them in a deliberate order. Nothing about an album is accidental, and tearing apart its components to make something new ignores all of the care that went into the original. Making a musical "collage" may seem charming - and I don't think it detracts from the artistry of Britney if that's your thing - but imagine tearing a couple of tracks out of Dark Side of the Moon or Tommy to make such a compilation.
It's not just the context that's missing, however: Early Days cuts out some amazing songs from Zeppelin's first four albums. "Going to California" gets axed while the grating (albeit intriguing) "Battle of Evermore" makes it? Where's "Gallows Pole," "Tangerine," or "That's the Way?" You miss something - a lot, it seems - by cutting 36 tracks down to 13. If this collection covers everything you know from Led Zeppelin 1 through 4, you're missing a lot of golden material. Why let the label decide what songs are "greatest" and what songs are expendable?
But while one may impeach Atlantic's choices, it's hardly the label's fault that some songs had to fall by the wayside. Led Zeppelin made too much great music to cut his catalog down by more than 60 percent. There isn't enough fat to trim out to make a greatest hits compilation feasible.
(Don't even get me started on the red-and-blue Beatles collections. Summarizing the Beatles on four CDs is a laughable proposition.)
And don't overlook the coin's other side: there are greatest hits CDs overwhelmed with fat, too. Not to be too blunt, but Soft Cell - famed for "Tainted Love" - does not need a greatest hits CD (and if anyone wants to buy mine off me, let me know). It's a thin, weak record that capitalizes on the drawing power of one hit.
Yes, record companies are out to make a buck. Guess what? They're companies. That's what they do. If recording and selling music wasn't profitable, those big-shot label executives would run off and do something else. This doesn't make them evil. It does mean, however, that they put money ahead of art. If something devoid of artistic merit will get 15-year olds to shell out $15 - or get nostalgic 40-somethings to cough up even more - don't expect a record company to decline on "artistic grounds."
And shell out you do. Once again, the rules of capitalism make things simple: these albums are there because you want them. If you didn't want them, you wouldn't buy them. If you didn't buy them, the companies wouldn't make them. Case closed.
But America does want greatest hits CDs, just like it wants car chases, punchy commercials, flashing neon signs, piping-hot homogeneous chicken nuggets, and everything else that is fast-paced, cheap, and remotely pleasing. But these albums are sneaky. They're fast food masquerading as legitimate cuisine; they're the Boston Markets of the music industry.
Boston Market would love to convince you that its food is up there with a home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner. After all, the same ingredients are there; they're just repackaged into a convenient premade, single-serving dish.
The food is not the same, however, and no amount of tasty mac 'n cheese should convince you otherwise. Greatest hits albums are not evil, and neither is Boston Market. They're just fast alternatives that take the original and make it more marketable. I'm happy to eat at Boston Market, but I'm still going home for Thanksgiving. I'm happy that people like their Smashing Pumpkins greatest hits CDs, but I'm going to hang onto my collection of albums, thank you.
So while the advantages being touted in the stores today are true, don't consider any greatest hits album a replacement for an original. If you're serious about an artist's music, you're going to want the real deal someday - and when that day comes, you'll wonder what the hell you're going to do with that useless greatest hits CD you bought.
