A Greatest Hits collection (covering the songs we’ve all heard on the radio a million times) might be fine for a casual Stones fan, but if you want to go a bit deeper try “Exile on Main Street” - 18 tracks (not including CD re-release “bonus” material) considered by many to be their best work (if not one of THE best rock albums, period) - you might find plenty there to like.
Oh, here’s a complaint. A major complaint.
My favorite song, not just by The Pogues, but all time #1 by anybody is Haunted. Does not appear on Best/Best of the Rest/Ultimate Collection. Got to get into the big box sets/imports/soundtracks to find it.
Bob Dylan’s “Greatest Hits Volume 2” did this back in 1971, in part because it was two hours since he had released anything new and back then two years was an eternity.
Ah, that’s how I got the Beach Boys, Steppenwolf and The Guess Who!
I had to smile about this being the first reply - I’ve been ripping my vinyl to MP3 as part of the process, and recently rediscovered this very album. I’d forgotten how sweet it really is - gems indeed. I agree wholeheartedly!
I also agree with the comments about motown too. Can’t go along with Simon and Garfunkel though, but that’s only because I love the contents of both The Sounds of Silence and Bridge Over Troubled Water albums.
The Allman Brothers’ A Decade of Hits gets my strongest recommendation.
Great example. Singles Going Steady almost exists as an album in its own right.
I offer Motörhead’s No Remorse as also almost an entire album on its own. It was a double album released only six years or so into the band’s career, AND featured two or three new tracks, AND one of those new songs was “Killed by Death” SO you’d have to be a total wiener not to like it.
Probably because it’s not a Pogues song at all. It was a solo release on ZIT, the Pogues were on Island at the time. It was released as a single and on the re-release of the Shane McGowan & the Popes album The Snake.
My only complaint about greatest hits albums are when they leave a couple of hits off of “Volume 1” just so that they can make a “Volume 2” that consists of a couple of hits and a bunch of non-hits.
I got to know Howlin’ Wolf’s music through the “His Best” Chess compilation and I still think that one is excellent. You don’t lose anything with compilations of old blues stuff because albums back then were just collections of singles anyway. They weren’t necessarily intended as sets of songs the way current albums are. I have the full albums those songs come from but I still prefer the greatest hits arrangement. The Bad Religion “All Ages” collection is really good. I don’t have the original albums those songs came from, but I’ve been meaning to get some of them.
My brother bought a crate of records at one point in time, going after one specific disc he didn’t have and he gave me the rest - so I have pretty much every single Tangerine Dream up to Bootleg 2, and a bunch of the CDs except for the 4 compilation albums. I really need to get the record player to transfer them to mp3.
I think everybody who was a teen in 78-84 had The Cars best of album …
I absolutely hate the difference between editions of albums - I had a cassette of Manfred Man Somewhere in Africa and when I went to replace it all I can find is apparently the european version which lacks the song ‘The Runner’ which is the only other track I wanted from it besides ‘Demolition Man.’
McGowan didn’t sign with ZTT (!) until the early 90s. And last I checked 1986 wasn’t in the early 90s.
I have no idea what you mean by “solo”. Cait O’Riordan recorded it with the rest of The Pogues. She never released it on her own.
According to their discography, the Haunted single was released by MCA, one of their pre-Island labels. So Island and ZTT had nothing to do with the original.
This used to happen quite a lot, along with the phenomenon of Greatest Hits albums by groups that had maybe 1 or 2 good songs for their entire career.
In the realm of two-volume Greatest Hits albums that barely have enough good songs for half of one volume, there’s my Eddie Cochran double vinyl album. When you get past “Summertime Blues” and “Twenty Flight Rock” there isn’t a whole lot of good stuff, so I wound up with forgettables and downright embarassments like “Sittin’ In The Balcony” and “Cut Across Shorty”.
Regarding what a previous poster said, I have a couple of Rolling Stones Best Of albums that contain all the Stones songs I want to hear - I have no original albums of theirs.
As to “you can’t have a Best Of album by X, you’ll lose the context” - pshaw. Stop taking yourselves so seriously, guys.
Of course, the availability of digital downloads has meant it’s easy to put together your own Greatest Hits album that you’ll appreciate more than someone else’s compilation. Or you can create your own Greatest Hit album (one good song done by multiple artists) - for instance, I now have about a dozen versions of “St. James Infirmary” done by everybody from the White Stripes to Dave Van Ronk to Artie Shaw.