This idea occurred to me as I pulled a record out of the stacks to play a while back. It was a greatest hits album, the only album I own by this particular band. What I realized as I was listening is it’s the only record by the band that I want to own, and I started to wonder what other greatest hits collections would fit that description. Not to be confused with an earlier post about greatest hits and best-ofs that are essential additions to an otherwise strong catalog, I wanted to single out the compilations that are the only records I need in my collection from certain musicians.
The bottom line question in each case was – if I owned other records by the artist would I ever pull one out over the greatest hits? My listening experience with each of these artists tells me no. Sometimes, it’s because I just don’t enjoy every track on every record in an artist’s catalog. To my ears, there are sub-par songs on the studio albums that I find I just don’t care to hear (again) when I want to hear the songs I really dig. Other times it’s because certain artists here were very intentionally singles bands; they were great at it, bless ‘em, and their legacy is solid around it. In those cases, the singles everybody knows were superior by design to whatever else they threw onto an album. No other record in their catalog is as satisfying a sugar high as a collection of the hits.
I ended up with six examples off the top of my head. I’ll keep my comments short as this list is personal and subjective enough to possibly be useless to anyone else. As always, feel free to add your own choices. At the end I mention a few I didn’t add to the list because one stubborn record in the catalog wouldn’t let me.
• Buffalo Springfield, Retrospective: The Best of Buffalo Springfield (1969)- To paraphrase Henry Wadsworth: When they were good they were very, very good, but when they were bad they were boring. Putting all of their very, very good to outstanding songs on one record was a laudable public service. Even the extended 2LP Buffalo Springfield compilation overstays its welcome by a track or three.
• Cheap Trick, Authorized Greatest Hits (2000) – Close call, really close call. An inner voice kept nagging me to leave this off by whispering “Dream Police” over and over in my ear. But it’s here, the song at least, and it always scratches that itch in this context. I finally admitted to myself that I have the most fun with Cheap Trick when I cherry-pick their mostly fine albums. I also realized that if I took the time to create my own playlist it would look like this collection.
• Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, Greatest Hits (2014) – Joan & Co. mastered the fine art of knowing exactly which new songs would strike a commercial nerve with the public. She never steered her ship onto the rocks. There are decent deep cuts on many of her albums, but the songs she brought to show and tell were always the transcendent ones.
• Nirvana (2002) – I always heard Nirvana as a kind of a one trick pony, if I’m being honest. A collection that gives me all of Kurt’s most (tormented) genius songs and a couple of highlights from the Unplugged session is the one I’ll pull out all day long. I’m not feeling the pull of the primal therapy sessions of their studio releases very often.
• A Flock of Seagulls, The Best of… (1987) - Too easy? AFOS were without a doubt a highly focused singles band, and a great one. The songs collected here are timeless, impossibly catchy examples of 80s synth-pop, with a bespeckled, pomaded lead guitarist as their secret weapon. Most of the other cuts on their albums didn’t quite make it out of the 80s alive and sound pretty dated when they're exposed to sunlight today. I don’t hold that against them in the slightest, I'll happily play this one.
• Todd Rundgren, The Very Best of… (1997) - This compilation from Rhino records has it all – melodic Todd, goofy Todd, challenging Todd, garage-rock Todd, anthem Todd, and a little head-scratching Todd because there’s no escaping those. I can listen and enjoy it all without feeling the psychic exhaustion of Todd’s too-clever-for-their-own-good studio albums, with or without Utopia.
And finally, a few almosts, and the one album I wouldn’t give up to make them fit the topic:
• Alice Cooper, Greatest Hits (Welcome to My Nightmare)
• Fairport Convention, Fairport Chronicles (Unhalfbricking)
• Styx, Greatest Hits (Crystal Ball)
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