I buy a whole lot of Greatest Hits CDs because I love Top 40. I am a pop music princess, whose love goes waaaaay back to music made before I was born. And, I’m not rich so I cannot buy every CD made by all pop masters past and present. Plus, double and— I HATE buying a whole album and only liking 2 stinking songs on it. So, it’s Greatest Hits for me.
You’d think I’d learn after buying The Eagle’s Greatest to check the song list. The first and biggest Greatest Hits gyp in the history of GH gyps since it does not contain Hotel California. Nope, did not learn a thing. Just ripped Journey’s Greatest into my work computer and am loving all the overwrought power ballads and anticipating my favorite of all. 15 songs later-- no Oh, Cheri. What a gyp!
What other gyps should I be looking out for?
Methinks Biggirl is gonna get a typically rude SDMB awakening into the proper usage of the word “gyp”. 
And “Oh, Sherry” was a song by Steve Perry, the lead singer of Journey, not Journey itself.
My pet peeve is when they stick a “live” version of a hit on the Greatest Hits/Best Of compilation. The latest example I can think of is the recent “Black Sabbath: The Dio Years”. They put on a live version of “Children of the Sea”.
I think there’s a Simon & Garfunkle compilation out there with some live cuts as well.
The really outrageous thing some groups do is put one or two new/previously unreleased cuts on a Best Of. Jethro Tull did this several times. Emerson Lake and Palmer put out a boxset Best of and stuck unreleased tracks on it.
Way to take advantage of the die-hard fans!
I believe I used the word ‘gyp’ correctly. Do you mean posters will call me to task for using a word that is supposedly offensive to Gypsies? I don’t think Dopers will be that niggardly with their patience.
Everclear’s greatest hits album doesn’t contain “Nervous & Weird” or “Heartspark Dollarsign.”
The Smashing Pumpkins’ greatest hits album doesn’t contain “Muzzle,” “Thirty-Three,” or “The End is the Beginning is the End.”
I bought Steely Dan’s Gold years ago from a CD club without reading the track list. I thought it was a greatest hits album but it’s not. I’m not sure what it is, but without Do It Again, Reeling in the Years or My Old School, it ain’t a greatest hits album. I later bought A Decade of Steely Dan, which filled some gaps.
You made me wanna queue them up on the juke box. LOVE THEM!
I agree Bwana. The Police GH has only the new(er) version of Don’t Stand So Close To Me, which I like but-- I want the version that was the hit!
I hate that version, too. They have another compiliation that has the real version. But I solved that by getting The Complete Recordings box set.
My pet peeve is the GH of Don McLean that has a shortened version of American Pie :mad:
That’s because “Heartspark Dollarsign” might arguably have been a hit, but there was nothing “great” about it. 
:eek: Ouch! I love that song.
Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits (at least Volumes 1 and 2, circa 1985) do not contain Scenes from an Italian Restaurant. There are numerous other great Billy Joel songs that didn’t make the cut as well, but I don’t hear them on the radio at all -that one got (and gets) so much air play it should certainly should have qualified.
Celine Dion’s Greatest Hits doesn’t include Where Does My Heart Beat Now, which was her first big hit in the English-music world.
Just wanted to pop in and point out that it’s not always the band or record labels fault when certain hits are missing from compilations.
The biggest problem is when an artists catalogue is split across 2 or more rights holders.
Using my favourite band, The Cult as an example, their original hits are all rights-managed by Beggars Banquet, but their last album is riht-managed by Warner.
Thus we’ll never see a compilation with songs from both rights holders on one disc.
Queen’s Greatist hits does not have “Bohemian Rhapsody”, which is just wrong.
Madonna’s Immaculate Collection doesn’t contain “Dress You Up.”
You got the one called “Greatest Hits 1971-1975,” right? There is a volume 2, you know.
Rule #1 of Greatest Hits Albums: Often, when a band/artist has had a relatively long career, they will release more than one greatest hits album, covering different timespans.
Rule #2 of Greatest Hits Albums: If a band/artist releases a Greatest Hits compilation, and then goes on to make more music, none of that new music will appear on the older compilation (unless they’ve gone back and added to it).
Rule #3 of Greatest Hits Albums: With a few exceptions, you cannot expect a band’s greatest hits album to include songs that are not by that band.
Yeah, that one pissed me off.
Yeah, that one really pissed me off. So very wrong.
Then there’s Queen’s Greatest Hits. I had the old cassette version on Electra Records, which really did have all their hits up through about 1980. Then, in the CD era, there appeared a “Queen’s Greatest Hits” on CD with a substantially different track listing (and no Bohemian Rhapsody!). Fortunately, I didn’t fall for that one.
Er, what? My copy does. Are there different editions?
I’ll agree with that.
Also, some of the songs on his greatest hits (IIRC, Pressure and Just the Way You are) are edited shorter versions than appeared on the original albums, and that bugs me.
Oh sherry was a Steve Perry solo song IIRC, although some GH packages include the lead singer’s solo work.
Hotel California released in 1976, first Eagles best of was released a year earlier.
As noted above, licensing issues are a reason for some exclusions, as are “who owns the copyright for each song”. Alice Cooper’s first best of excluded a couple of major songs, because Alice didn’t own the rights and thus would get a smaller chunk of the proceeds.